White Malice (5) Dag Hammarskjold

I was in my last years at primary school when Dag Hammarskjold the Secretary-General of the United Nations died in 1961. The news was shocking because he was a good man, committed to doing the right thing, even if it upset people with economic and imperial power. At a time when they were gaining independence from the old colonial powers, many African saw him as a defender of their rights.

The official verdict was that he died accidentally in a plane crash. Susan Williams does not discuss this much in this book (because she has a separate book that led to the cause of his death being reinvestigated) but she explains that the CIA was involved in the organization of his death.

CIA director Allen Dulles had promised full cooperation with ‘Operation Celeste’, a plot to kill Hammarskjold.

Hammarskjold’s DC-6 crashed while preparing to land at Ndola. This is significant due to the absence of any serious hills nearby (White Malice p.415).

Local witnesses who had seen a second plane above the DC-6 and shooting at it. I think one of the mercenary aircraft, operating around Ndola on that night fired a tracer bullet into the fuel tanks of the plane, causing the left wing to catch on fire. The plots had no choice but to put die plane on the ground (White Malice p.418).

In 2013, a Hammarskjöld Commission made up of four distinguished international judges conducted a rigorous examination of the available evidence and interviews in Ndola with witnesses who were still alive. They concluded,

There is persuasive evidence that the aircraft was subjected to some form of attack or threat as it circled to land at Ndola … (and) was in fact forced into its descent by some form of hostile action.

This was another ugly incident by people who wanted to retain economic and political power.