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Hammarskjold In FT148

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In a letter published in FT148 (p.55) DC King, from Oregon, claims that the accident which killed UN General Secretary Dag Hammarskjold was, in fact, a suicide and that this has been covered up by the UN ever since.
I have never heard this theory before, so is there anyone out there (perhaps mr. King himself) who has anymore information on the subject?
/Jonas
 
There are references online to the plane crash being suspicious
with a suggestion of assassination but suicide? Was he flying
the plane himself?
 
No, Hammarskjold was not alone in the plane. There where something like ten people with him.
I think that it has been suggested in at least two books in swedish that it was in fact the CIA which killed him.
/Jonas
 
I've read all about this at great length, quite recently. Was it actually in FT?
As I remember it, DH was a suicidal type and caused the plane to crash, killing nearly everyone on board. He was found beside wreckage with a clearly self-inflicted fatal bullet wound to the head.

Incidentally, I read a book mentioning this called 'The Door To The Future' by Jess Stearn in the early 70s. It must have been published in the 60s, and even then was referring to 'the mystery of DH's death'. In a fittingly Fortean context the chapter was about the famous seer Jean Dixon who reputedly advised Presidents about world events to come.
 
Time to reanimate this 2001 thread.

New inquiry into ex-UN chief Dag Hammarskjold's death
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-18897998

The DC6 plane crashed in the early hours of 18 September 1961

Related Stories

Who killed Dag Hammarskjold?

An new inquiry is to be launched into the death of United Nations Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold when his plane crashed in Zambia in 1961.

A UN investigation in 1962 failed to find a cause for the Swedish-born diplomat's mysterious demise.

New evidence will be examined by an international commission of lawyers.

Mr Hammarskjold's plane was travelling to Congo on a peace mission when it crashed in a forest near Ndola in Northern Rhodesia, now Zambia.

The crash occurred shortly before landing just after midnight on 18 September.

All but one of the passengers and crew on the flight were killed.

'Whole truth'

The committee's chairman David Lea, said that the time was right to set up the new inquiry.

"We believe that the whole of the truth, in significant respects, has yet to be told," he said.

Continue reading the main story
Dag Hammarskjold


Born in 1905 into an aristocratic Swedish family
Full name, Dag Hjalmar Agne Carl Hammarskjold
Helped lay foundations of Swedish welfare state
Swedish state secretary for foreign affairs (1947-1951)
The UN's second secretary general (1953-1961), proposed by Britain and France
Nobel Peace Prize winner 1961
Three investigations have failed to determine the cause of the crash, and many conspiracy theories have swirled around Mr Hammarskjold's death.

Two investigations held in the British-run Central African Federation, which included Northern Rhodesia, were followed by an official UN inquiry, which concluded that foul play could not be ruled out.

Though the inquiry has no official standing, it will be carried out by several high-profile jurists, including South African judge Richard Goldstone, retired British judge Stephen Sedley, former Swedish diplomat Hans Correll and Dutch Supreme Court judge Wilhelmina Thomassen.

They hope to to review the evidence, complete their report within a year and submit the findings to the UN.

Mr Lea said a book published last year by British academic Susan Williams entitled Who Killed Hammarskjold? - which concluded that it was likely that the plane was brought down - provided fresh evidence that needed to be examined.

The plane crashed as he was trying to negotiate a ceasefire in Congo's mineral-rich Katanga province, where Moise Tshombe led Western-backed separatist rebels against the Soviet Union-allied Congolese government.

After his death, Mr Hammarskjold was described by US President John F Kennedy as the "greatest statesman of our century".

The only person to be awarded a Nobel Peace Prize after his death, he established the first armed UN peacekeeping mission following the crisis in Suez.
Click to expand...
 
Update:

A UN report into the death of its former secretary general Dag Hammarskjöld in a 1961 plane crash in central Africa has found that there is a “significant amount of evidence” that his flight was brought down by another aircraft.

The report, delivered to the current secretary general, António Guterres, last month, took into account previously undisclosed information provided by the US, UK, Belgian, Canadian and German governments.

Its author, Mohamed Chande Othman, a former Tanzanian chief justice, found that the US and UK governments had intercepted radio traffic in the area at the time and suggested that the 56-year-old mystery could be solved if the contents of those classified recordings were produced.

“I am indebted for the assistance that I received, which uncovered a large amount of valuable new information,” Othman said in an executive summary of his report, seen by the Guardian. “I can confidently state that the deeper we have gone into the searches, the more relevant information has been found.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...sed-by-aircraft-attack?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
 
Another update, with a backward look at something missing from this thread to date ...

The 2012 BBC article (see post #5) cites the appointment of a commission to study the crash.

The later articles cited (posts #6 and #7) bypass this commission's results and go on to address subsequent continuation of conspiracy-theoretical angles.

Wait a minute ... What did that 2012 commission conclude?

The commission's report basically enumerated all the diverse alternative theories and left the door open for multiple of them to continue 'in play'. Their September 2013 report is accessible at:

http://www.hammarskjoldcommission.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/REPORT.pdf

In the report, the commission notes the work done for them by aviation / air crash expert Sven Hammarberg and MIT professor John Hansman - both of whom concluded the crash represented a controlled flight into terrain (CFIT). However, the commission report omits reference to all the rationale Hammarberg presented for his CFIT conclusion, and they go on to treat the CFIT theory as just another possibility.

Hammarberg's 2013 accident investigator's report to the commission is available at:

http://www.hammarskjoldcommission.o...ors-report-to-the-Hammarskold-Commission1.pdf
 
Now here are the additional tidbits from the 2012 / 2013 commission investigation that have me wondering 'WTF?' ...

Hammarberg's report points to two key facts not reflected in the overall commission report:

- The crew had been on duty for 17 hours at the time of the crash, and their actions and communications suggested signs of probable fatigue.

- The pilot's key reference for landing at Ndola airport (the Jeppesen's chart from his manual, which had been removed for use ... ) failed to show the hill / elevated ground into which the plane crashed.

The Smithsonian Channel has an upcoming show on the subject, and an interview / re-enactment with Hammarberg is available as an online video:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/vide...it-took-decades-to-solve-this-un-plane-crash/

... which focuses on these two facts and his theory of how they probably caused the crash in and of themselves.

It seems that many folks are continuing to promote some sort of foul play theory, but no one paid any attention to the two aviation / accident experts' conclusion(s) some 4 years ago.
:dunno: :roll:
 
A brace of news stories today naming Jan van Risseghem, a Belgian (ex-RAF) mercenary as a highly likely suspect:

For decades, Van Risseghem appeared to have proof that he wasn’t flying in the region on the night Hammarskjöld’s plane, the Albertina, came down outside Ndola in Zambia, then called Northern Rhodesia.​
​
Flight logs – meticulous records of where and when he flew – appear to show Van Risseghem was not flying for most of that month, returning to duty only on 20 September. However, Roger Bracco, another mercenary flying for the Katangese, told filmmakers that his colleague’s logbooks are dotted with apparent forgeries.​
​
He does not believe that Van Risseghem shot down Hammarskjöld. But when asked in an interview for the film if he considered the logbook a fake, he responds: “I won’t say so, but … I didn’t recognise the story [it told].” Leafing through the book, he later directly accuses Van Risseghem of forgery. “This is fake,” Bracco says bluntly of one flight destination, and goes on to add that some of the names listed for co-pilots are not real.​
​
A friend has also come forward to claim that, less than a decade after Hammarskjöld’s death, Van Risseghem told him he had attacked the plane. Pierre Coppens met Van Risseghem in 1965, when he was flying for a parachute training centre in Belgium. Over several conversations, he claimed, the pilot detailed how he overcame various technical challenges to down the plane, unaware of who was travelling inside.​
​
“He didn’t know,” Coppens said. “He said ‘I made the mission’ and that’s all. And then I had to go back and save my life’.”​

Source:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...un-secretary-general-dag-hammarskjold-in-1961

Among the critical evidence gathered by Williams and independent researcher Göran Björkdahl is testimony from a former US spy, posted to a listening station in Cyprus, who heard a recording of a pilot apparently narrating the attack as it unfolded, transmitted just minutes after it happened.​
​
It matches accounts collected from Zambian witnesses living around the crash site, who said they had seen a second aircraft near Hammarskjöld’s plane and unusual lights and sounds in the sky. They had been largely ignored by white officials working on the early inquiries. The sole immediate survivor of the crash also described some kind of aerial attack, involving “sparks in the air” before he died a week after the crash. Doctors said he was lucid at the time, but his testimony had also been largely ignored.​

Source:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...hot-down-un-chief-dag-hammarskjold-1961-plane
 
Last edited:
Yithian said:
A brace of news stories today naming Jan van Risseghem, a Belgian (ex-RAF) mercenary as a highly likely suspect:

For decades, Van Risseghem appeared to have proof that he wasn’t flying in the region on the night Hammarskjöld’s plane, the Albertina, came down outside Ndola in Zambia, then called Northern Rhodesia.​
​
Flight logs – meticulous records of where and when he flew – appear to show Van Risseghem was not flying for most of that month, returning to duty only on 20 September. However, Roger Bracco, another mercenary flying for the Katangese, told filmmakers that his colleague’s logbooks are dotted with apparent forgeries.​
​
He does not believe that Van Risseghem shot down Hammarskjöld. But when asked in an interview for the film if he considered the logbook a fake, he responds: “I won’t say so, but … I didn’t recognise the story [it told].” Leafing through the book, he later directly accuses Van Risseghem of forgery. “This is fake,” Bracco says bluntly of one flight destination, and goes on to add that some of the names listed for co-pilots are not real.​
​
A friend has also come forward to claim that, less than a decade after Hammarskjöld’s death, Van Risseghem told him he had attacked the plane. Pierre Coppens met Van Risseghem in 1965, when he was flying for a parachute training centre in Belgium. Over several conversations, he claimed, the pilot detailed how he overcame various technical challenges to down the plane, unaware of who was travelling inside.​
​
“He didn’t know,” Coppens said. “He said ‘I made the mission’ and that’s all. And then I had to go back and save my life’.”​

Source:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...un-secretary-general-dag-hammarskjold-in-1961

Among the critical evidence gathered by Williams and independent researcher Göran Björkdahl is testimony from a former US spy, posted to a listening station in Cyprus, who heard a recording of a pilot apparently narrating the attack as it unfolded, transmitted just minutes after it happened.​
​
It matches accounts collected from Zambian witnesses living around the crash site, who said they had seen a second aircraft near Hammarskjöld’s plane and unusual lights and sounds in the sky. They had been largely ignored by white officials working on the early inquiries. The sole immediate survivor of the crash also described some kind of aerial attack, involving “sparks in the air” before he died a week after the crash. Doctors said he was lucid at the time, but his testimony had also been largely ignored.​

Source:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...hot-down-un-chief-dag-hammarskjold-1961-plane
Click to expand...
Interesting Yith. A highly unstable part of the world (centralish Africa). The Katanga province is incredibly mineral rich, yet the people never see any of it. They haven't had a lasting peace since the 60's and atrocities continue. Earlier they were subjected to a brutal colonization that cost the lives of millions. Angola, Uganda, Sudan, Rwanda haven't fared any better. I believe that Zambia has at least been free of war in recent years but Aids is at plaque levels.
 
A new documentary promises fresh revelations.

A Congo conspiracy: Documentary seeks to answer question of who killed Dag Hammarskjöld

An exhaustive study of the case published in 2011, “Who Killed Hammarskjöld? The UN, the Cold War and White Power in Africa,” found that “whatever the details, his death was almost certainly the result of a sinister intervention.” A new documentary film — the product of a six-year investigation — goes further. It concludes that Hammarskjöld’s plane was shot down, names the now-deceased Belgian pilot who allegedly committed the crime, and offers the first detailed look inside a secret para-military arm of South Africa’s apartheid regime that may have designed the plot. ...

The new documentary film, called “Cold Case Hammarskjöld,” takes the story further. Among those who testify on camera is a former National Security Agency officer who was serving at a radio surveillance base in Cyprus on the night of the crash and monitored a pilot saying, “I hit it! There are flames coming out of it!” He said the NSA has refused his request to obtain transcripts of that night’s tapes because they are “top secret on national security grounds.”

Most dramatic is the testimony of a veteran of the clandestine para-military force implicated in the crime who says he decided to break his oath of secrecy because he feels guilt and needs “personal closure.” He then provides dramatic details of what he describes as an assassination plot involving the Belgian, South African, British, and American intelligence services. “Africa would have been a completely different continent today if Dag Hammarskjöld was allowed to live and follow through on his mandate,” he muses. A note at the end of the film says that this witness has left South Africa, lives in hiding, and is providing information to UN investigators. ...

https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion...ammarskjold/AgA65kfYa9PfGHi1YgtB6M/story.html
 
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