A murder mystery

The death of U.N. Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold in a plane crash 50 years ago is one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of the Cold War era.

See how love and murder will out.William Congreve in The Double Dealer.

THIS stupendous work of research comes as close to resolving the mystery of Dag Hammarskjold's murder as any work possibly can, half a century after the crime. To this day he remains a model Secretary-General of the United Nations whom none of his successors could quite emulate, let alone rival. Susan Williams, an academic at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London, has written widely and with deep empathy on Africa. The book makes a timely appearance and is certain to rank as the most thorough study by far on the murder and the circumstances surrounding it. She has spared herself no pains and has tapped archives and sources with grim determination, including Dag Hammarskjold's nephew Knut Hammarskjold and three experts.

The book begins with a quote from Dag's Markings (1952), a work that revealed an anguished, almost tortured soul. The hardest thing of all to die rightly. An exam nobody is spared and how many pass it? (italics as in the original.) The erudite aesthete read the classics in four languages and had a fine appreciation of music and painting. Aloof in demeanour, fastidious in appearance, he yet commanded deep loyalty from his subordinates. The U.N. acquired great prestige under his leadership. His post became a rival centre of power; no less irksome to the Great Powers because it was moral power, which the assertive newly independent states looked up to.

The author places the crime in context. Between 10 and 15 minutes after midnight on September 18, 1961, a DC-6B aircraft crashed near the airport of Ndola, a town in the British colony of Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia). It had flown from Leopoldville (now Kinshasa) and was taking Dag Hammarskjold and his entourage on a mission to try to bring peace to the Congo.

Questions were asked almost instantly. Ndola air traffic control had seen the plane flying overhead and had granted the pilot permission to land. Then why did the airport manager close down the airport? Why did Lord Alport, the British High Commissioner to the Central African Federation at Salisbury (now Harare), who was at the airport, insist that the Secretary-General must have decided to go elsewhere'? Why did it take until four hours after daybreak to start a search even though local residents, policemen and soldiers reported seeing a great flash of light in the sky shortly after midnight? Why was the missing aircraft not found for a full 15 hours, even though it was just eight miles (13 kilometres) from the airport where it had been expected to land? What about the second plane that had been seen to follow the Secretary-General's aircraft? Why did the survivor refer to an explosion before the crash? Why did Hammarskjold have no burns, when the other victims were so badly charred? How did he escape the intense blaze, which destroyed 75 to 80 per cent of the fuselage? Nehru voiced his suspicions, as did a report in The Hindu of September 19, 1961 (see box).

There was no dearth of inquires into the tragedy. The author has consulted them all and, indeed, gone beyond the records in order to unravel the mystery. This is drawn from her careful resume: The initial investigation was followed by two major public inquiries. The first, conducted by a Rhodesian Commission, produced its report in February 1962. It concluded that the crash was an accident, caused by pilot error. The second major public inquiry was conducted by a U.N. Commission. It delivered an open verdict on the cause of the crash when it produced its report in April 1962. It argued that as no special guard was provided for the plane prior to its departure from Leopoldville airport, an unauthorised approach to the aircraft for purposes of sabotage cannot be excluded; although the doors were said to have been locked when the plane was parked at Leopoldville, access was possible to the hydraulic compartment, the heating system and the undercarriage of the aircraft. The commission added that it could not exclude attack as a possible cause of the crash. Concern was expressed at the delay in the search and rescue procedures, particularly since the plane had crashed not far from an airfield on which 18 Rhodesian military aircraft capable of carrying out an air search were stationed.

Thirty years later, a letter written to The Guardian on November 9, 1992, by two former U.N. officials, George Ivan Smith and Conor Cruise O'Brien, alleged that the Hammarskjold plane crash was no accident.

The Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs thereupon authorised an inquiry into the crash. It was conducted by Bengt Rosio, formerly the Swedish consul and Head of Mission in the Congo in the early 1960s and then a career diplomat in the Swedish Foreign Service. Rosio produced a report in 1993, in which he concluded that the least improbable cause for the crash was CFIT Controlled Flight into Terrain. The pilot had made an error in judgment. Rosio was biased for as far back as in 1961 he had assured the British that the crash was an accident and had been due to pilot's error.

The author records: In 2005, Major General Bjorn Egge, a Norwegian who had been the U.N.'s head of military information in the Congo in 1961, with the rank of colonel, suggested that Hammarskjold had a round hole in his forehead that was possibly consistent with a bullet hole. Now eighty-seven years of age, he explained in a statement to the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten that, straight after the crash in 1961, he had been sent to Ndola to collect the Secretary-General's cipher machine and his briefcase and had been allowed to see his dead body in the mortuary. The body seemed to have a hole in the forehead: He was not burnt as were the other casualties, but had a round hole in his forehead. On 9 photos taken of the body, however, this hole has been removed. I have always asked myself why this was done. Similarly, the autopsy report has been removed from the case papers. Again, I ask why?'

He added, When I saw Hammarskjold's body at the hospital, two British doctors were present, but not very willing to cooperate. However, I noticed the hole in Hammarskjold's forehead in particular.' Egge qualified his statement carefully in an interview with Aftenposten ten days later: he said there was no tangible evidence that Hammarskjold's death was the result of a conscious act by a third party, but that circumstantial evidence pointed in this direction.

Body without burns

The author discovered crucial archival material in the library of Rhodes House at Oxford University, comprising the papers of Sir Roy Welensky, Prime Minister of the Central Africa Federation. The photographs revealed the charred bodies of the crash victims. Hammarskjold's body had no burns at all. He looked almost immaculate, one extremely dignified.

There was something more. There is an object which looks like a playing card protruding from the ruffled tie (or possibly cravat) around Hammarskjold's neck. It must have been this card that led to rumours at the time that the Ace of Spades the death card' had been left on his body. It is not possible to identify the card as the Ace of Spades on the basis of the photograph, but a civilian photographer at the scene claimed years later to have seen it. Yes! D.H. did have the Ace of Spades in his shirt collar no comment,' he recalled. It was requested at the time not to mention this. It is unlikely that a journalist placed the card in Hammarskjold's neck, since police officers ensured that the Press touched nothing in the wreck'. The author cites credible evidence which establishes that the photographs were doctored. His briefcase was not burnt either. It was found intact.

Who organised the conspiracy to kill the Secretary-General and with what motive? Suspicion of murder was voiced immediately. In New Delhi, a wave of anti-British' hysteria broke out in the press, unequalled since the Suez crisis. Particularly unfortunate was the conduct of the U.N. inquiry. Witnesses were not to be compelled to answer questions. It did not dismiss the evidence of witnesses who said that they had seen or heard a second or even a third aircraft flying near the Albertina (which carried the Secretary-General as one of its passengers ) and had heard an explosion.

The conduct of Lord Alport was stranger. Why did he assert that Dag Hammarskjold had decided to go elsewhere' without the slightest ground for the inference. The author consulted his papers at the University of Essex and found a memorandum dated February 8, 1993, on the disaster. He wrote that Hammarskjold died shortly after the crash. Rhodesia's probe held that he died instantaneously.

Timothy Jiranda Kankasa, the board secretary of the township in Ndola, went to the site and reported to the police. They could not have cared less. The author and her husband met his widow Mama Chibesa Kankasa in 2009. One is struck repeatedly by the author's resourcefulness and the pains she took.

We discover that Mama Kankasa herself saw a ball of fire in the sky on the night of the crash, as well as two small planes flying away. Her husband had just escorted a friend on part of his way home and as he returned to their house he cried out to her to come outside, then pointed up to the sky. He told her what had happened and they knew then, she said, that Dag had been killed. Now Mama Kankasa draws a map for us, so that we can see the journey of the Albertina in the flight corridor passing by Twapia and their house. She also gives us more details about the morning of September 18, when her husband reported the sighting of the crashed Albertina to the authorities. In the early hours, she says, eight charcoal burners came to their house to say they had seen a plane burning in the forest. They said, too, that one man was still fighting for his life. Mr. Kankasa immediately made a report but nothing was done. It was not until after 15:15 [hours] that an ambulance was heard going to the scene of the crash.

Corroborative evidence

Outside Addis Ababa, a Swedish flying instructor, Tore Moijor, heard a conversation over short-wave radio between flight controllers, one of whom was at Ndola airport and expressed surprise that one plane was being unexpectedly followed by another. His story was published in the Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter in March 1994. He reported the exact words: Another plane is approaching from behind, what is that?

Cape Times carried a similar version on September 19, 1961. There is more corroborative evidence which suggests that Hammarskjold's plane was attacked and forced down and crashed as a result of actions from an unidentified aircraft. It was cold-blooded murder, perpetuated, obviously, with much preparation across a wide area. Mercenaries could not have done this. Only a government could have, albeit with the connivance of its partners in the crime.

An attempt was also made on the life of a U.N. official, more famous as a writer, Conor Cruise O'Brien. He and a colleague, George Ivan Smith, wrote to The Guardian on November 9, 1992. The heading summed up the contents: Hammarskjold's plane crash no accident'.

The matter also surfaced before South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission. In this plot, codenamed Operation Celeste', a bomb placed on the plane blew it up. According to the documents, Central Intelligence Agency Director Allen Dulles and Britian's M15 and Special Ops. Executive' had approved it.

One thing is certain the plane blew up in the air before it crashed. Conspiracy theories there were in abundance, each ruling out the rest. That one central fact survives, however. The author, fairly, urges a further, transparent, public inquiry to correct the findings of the gravely flawed probes conducted so far.