‘Persuasive evidence’: Request to reopen probe into former UN chief’s death

The enquiry wishes to confirm whether a mercenary fighter jet may have shot down his plane.

THE HAGUE:

Investigators have called on the United Nations to reopen a probe into the 1961 death of the UN secretary general Dag Hammarskjold, citing “persuasive evidence” that his plane was shot down.

The enquiry called on the US National Security Agency to release cockpit recordings from the time to confirm whether a mercenary fighter jet may have shot down the plane.

“There is persuasive evidence that the aircraft was subjected to some form of attack or threat as it circled to land at Ndola,” said the 61-page report released in The Hague by a privately appointed  commission consisting of high-profile international judges and diplomats.

Hammarskjold, the UN’s second secretary-general, died in mysterious circumstances in September 1961 while on a peace mission to the newly independent Congo, when his plane crashed shortly before landing at Ndola airport in Zambia (then Northern Rhodesia).

Published in The Express Tribune, September 10^th, 2013.