Guardian : Dag Hammarskjöld: evidence suggests UN chief's plane was shot down

Dag Hammarskjöld: evidence suggests UN chief's plane was shot down

Eyewitnesses claim a second aircraft fired at the plane raising questions of British cover-up over the 1961 crash and its causes

Julian Borger and Georgina Smith in Ndola | August 17, 2011

New evidence has emerged in one of the most enduring mysteries of United Nations and African history, suggesting that the plane carrying the UN secretary general Dag Hammarskjöld was shot down over Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) 50 years ago, and the murder was covered up by British colonial authorities.

A British-run commission of inquiry blamed the crash in 1961 on pilot error and a later UN investigation largely rubber-stamped its findings. They ignored or downplayed witness testimony of villagers near the crash site which suggested foul play. The Guardian has talked to surviving witnesses who were never questioned by the official investigations and were too scared to come forward.

The residents on the western outskirts of the town of Ndola described Hammarskjöld's DC6 being shot down by a second, smaller aircraft. They say the crash site was sealed off by Northern Rhodesian security forces the next morning, hours before the wreckage was officially declared found, and they were ordered to leave the area.

The key witnesses were located and interviewed over the past three years by Göran Björkdahl, a Swedish aid worker based in Africa, who made the investigation of the Hammarskjöld mystery a personal quest since discovering his father had a fragment of the crashed DC6.

"My father was in that part of Zambia in the 70s and asking local people about what happened, and a man there, seeing that he was interested, gave him a piece of the plane. That was what got me started," Björkdahl said. When he went to work in Africa himself, he went to the site and began to question the local people systematically on what they had seen.

The investigation led Björkdahl to previously unpublished telegrams – seen by the Guardian – from the days leading up to Hammarskjöld's death on 17 September 1961, which illustrate US and British anger at an abortive UN military operation that the secretary general ordered on behalf of the Congolese government against a rebellion backed by western mining companies and mercenaries in the mineral-rich Katanga region.

Hammarskjöld was flying to Ndola for peace talks with the Katanga leadership at a meeting that the British helped arrange. The fiercely independent Swedish diplomat had, by then, enraged almost all the major powers on the security council with his support for decolonisation, but support from developing countries meant his re-election as secretary general would have been virtually guaranteed at the general assembly vote due the following year.

Björkdahl works for the Swedish international development agency, Sida, but his investigation was carried out in his own time and his report does not represent the official views of his government. However, his report echoes the scepticism about the official verdict voiced by Swedish members of the commissions of inquiry.

Björkdahl concludes that:

• Hammarskjöld's plane was almost certainly shot down by an unidentified second plane.

• The actions of the British and Northern Rhodesian officials at the scene delayed the search for the missing plane.

• The wreckage was found and sealed off by Northern Rhodesian troops and police long before its discovery was officially announced.

• The one survivor of the crash could have been saved but was allowed to die in a poorly equipped local hospital.

• At the time of his death Hammarskjöld suspected British diplomats secretly supported the Katanga rebellion and had obstructed a bid to arrange a truce.

• Days before his death, Hammarskjöld authorised a UN offensive on Katanga – codenamed Operation Morthor – despite reservations of the UN legal adviser, to the fury of the US and Britain.

The most compelling new evidence comes from witnesses who had not previously been interviewed, mostly charcoal-makers from the forest around Ndola, now in their 70s and 80s.

Dickson Mbewe, now 84, was sitting outside his house in Chifubu compound west of Ndola with a group of friends on the night of the crash.

"We saw a plane fly over Chifubu but did not pay any attention to it the first time," he told the Guardian. "When we saw it a second and third time, we thought that this plane was denied landing permission at the airport. Suddenly, we saw another aircraft approach the bigger aircraft at greater speed and release fire which appeared as a bright light.

"The plane on the top turned and went in another direction. We sensed the change in sound of the bigger plane. It went down and disappeared."

At about 5am, Mbewe went to his charcoal kiln close to the crash site, where he found soldiers and policemen already dispersing people. According to the official report the wreckage was only discovered at 3pm that afternoon.

"There was a group of white soldiers carrying a body, two in front and two behind," he said. "I heard people saying there was a man who was found alive and should be taken to hospital. Nobody was allowed to stay there."

Mbewe did not forward with that information earlier because he was never asked to, he said. "The atmosphere was not peaceful, we were chased away. I was afraid to go to the police because they might put me in prison."

Another witness, Custon Chipoya, a 75-year-old charcoal maker, also claims to have seen a second plane in the sky that night. "I saw a plane turning, it had clear lights and I could hear the roaring sound of the engine," he said. "It wasn't very high. In my opinion, it was at the height that planes are when they are going to land.

"It came back a second time, which made us look and the third time, when it was turning towards the airport, I saw a smaller plane approaching behind the bigger one. The lighter aircraft, a smaller jet type of plane, was trailing behind and had a flash light. Then it released some fire on to the bigger plane below and went in the opposite direction.

"The bigger aircraft caught fire and started exploding, crashing towards us. We thought it was following us as it chopped off branches and tree trunks. We thought it was war, so we ran away."

Chipoya said he returned to the site the next morning at about 6am and found the area cordoned off by police and army officers. He didn't mention what he had seen because: "It was impossible to talk to a police officer then. We just understood that we had to go away," he said.

Safeli Mulenga, 83, also in Chifubu on the night of the crash, did not see a second plane but witnessed an explosion.

"I saw the plane circle twice," he said. "The third time fire came from somewhere above the plane, it glowed so bright. It couldn't have been the plane exploding because the fire was coming on to it," he said.

There was no announcement for people to come forward with information following the crash, and the federal government did not want people to talk about it, he said. "There were some who witnessed the crash and they were taken away and imprisoned."

John Ngongo, now 75, out in the bush with a friend to learn how to make charcoal on the night of the crash, did not see another plane but he definitely heard one, he said.

"Suddenly, we saw a plane with fire on one side coming towards us. It was on fire before it hit the trees. The plane was not alone. I heard another plane at high speed disappearing into the distance but I didn't see it," he said.

The only survivor among the 15 people on board the DC6 was Harold Julian, an American sergeant on Hammarskjöld's security detail. The official report said he died of his injuries, but Mark Lowenthal, a doctor who helped treat Julian in Ndola, told Björkdahl he could have been saved.

"I look upon the episode as having been one of my most egregious professional failures in what has become a long career," Lowenthal wrote in an email. "I must first ask why did the US authorities not at once set out to help/rescue one of their own? Why did I not think of this at the time? Why did I not try to contact US authorities to say, 'Send urgently an aircraft to evacuate a US citizen on secondment to UN who is dying of kidney failure?'"

Julian was left in Ndola for five days. Before he died, he told police he had seen sparks in the sky and an explosion before the crash.

Björkdahl also raises questions about why the DC6 was made to circle outside Ndola. The official report claims there was no tape recorder in the air traffic control tower, despite the fact that its equipment was new. The air traffic control report of the crash was not filed until 33 hours afterwards.

According to records of the events of the night, the British high commissioner to the Rhodesian and Nyasaland Federation, Cuthbert Alport, who was at the airport that evening, "suddenly said that he had heard that Hammarskjöld had changed his mind and intended to fly somewhere else. The airport manager therefore didn't send out any emergency alert and everyone simply went to bed."

The witness accounts of another plane are consistent with other insider accounts of Hammarskjold's death. Two of his top aides, Conor Cruise O'Brien and George Ivan Smith, both became convinced that the secretary general had been shot down by mercenaries working for European industrialists in Katanga. They also believed that the British helped cover up the shooting. In 1992, the two published a letter in the Guardian spelling out their theory. Suspicion of British intentions is a recurring theme of the correspondence Björkdahl has examined from the days before Hammarskjöld's death.

Formally, the UK backed the UN mission, but, privately, the secretary general and his aides believed British officials were obstructing peace moves, possibly as a result of mining interests and sympathies with the white colonists on the Katanga side.

On the morning of 13 September the separatist leader Moise Tshombe signalled that he was ready for a truce, but changed his mind after a one-hour meeting with the UK consul in Katanga, Denzil Dunnett.

There is no doubt that at the time of his death Hammarskjöld‚ who had already alienated the Soviets, French and Belgians, had also angered the Americans and the British with his decision to launch Operation Morthor against the rebel leaders and mercenaries in Katanga.

The US secretary of state, Dean Rusk, told one of the secretary general's aides that President Kennedy was "extremely upset" and was threatening to withdraw support from the UN. The UK , Rusk said, was "equally upset".

At the end of his investigation Björkdahl is still not sure who killed Hammarskjöld, but he is fairly certain why he was killed: "It's clear there were a lot of circumstances pointing to possible involvement by western powers. The motive was there – the threat to the west's interests in Congo's huge mineral deposits. And this was the time of black African liberation, and you had whites who were desperate to cling on.

"Dag Hammarskjöld was trying to stick to the UN charter and the rules of international law. I have the impression from his telegrams and his private letters that he was disgusted by the behaviour of the big powers."

Historians at the Foreign Office said they could not comment. British officials believe that, at this late date, no amount of research would conclusively prove or disprove what they see as conspiracy theories that have always surrounded Hammarskjöld's death.

NYT : Gunmen Kill U.N. Official in Somalia

Gunmen Kill U.N. Official in Somalia

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS | Published: July 7, 2008

MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) — Gunmen opened fire on people leaving a mosque in Mogadishu on Sunday night, killing one of the country’s senior United Nations officials and wounding his son and another man, a witness and a family member said.

Attacks on officials, including those working for the United Nations and international aid agencies, are common in Somalia, where Islamic militants have vowed to fight an insurgency against the country’s weak government, which is supported by the United Nations.

Osman Ali Ahmed, the head of the United Nations Development Program for Somalia, was covered in blood and unconscious as he was rushed to a hospital after Sunday’s shooting, said Hassan Ali, a witness and a neighbor of Mr. Ahmed’s. Mr. Ali said it was not clear how seriously Mr. Ahmed’s son and the other man had been wounded.

Mr. Ahmed’s wife, Masteho Abubakr Yusus, later said in an interview that her husband had died at the African Union hospital.

The shooting occurred a day after an explosion killed a Somali official, his wife and four other people in Mogadishu.

On June 21, Hassan Muhammad Ali, head of the office of the United Nations Commissioner for Refugees, was abducted from his home on the outskirts of Mogadishu.

Reuters : UN security chief to quit after bombing report

UN security chief to quit after bombing report

By Patrick Worsnip | June 24, 2008

UNITED NATIONS, June 24 (Reuters) - The head of U.N. security has resigned after an inquiry into a car bombing that killed 17 U.N. staff in Algiers criticized failures by his department, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Tuesday.

Ban said in a statement that Britain's David Veness, Under-Secretary-General for Safety and Security, had told him on Monday he was taking the blame for "any security lapse that may have occurred" over the attack on Dec. 11 last year.

Veness, a former anti-terrorism chief at Britain's Scotland Yard police headquarters, has held the U.N. job for three years. Ban said he had significantly improved the world body's security system and would stay on until a successor could be found.

A seven-person outside panel that investigated the Algiers bombing aimed at the U.N. compound there, and drew lessons for U.N. security worldwide, said in a report the attack had put security arrangements to the test.

"Most unfortunately, the system as a whole and individuals who, both in the duty station itself and at headquarters, held direct responsibility for the U.N. presence in Algiers and the security of its personnel and premises, have been found wanting," panel chief Lakhdar Brahimi said.

There was "ample evidence that several staff members up and down the hierarchy may have failed to respond adequately to the Algiers attack, both before and after the tragedy," Brahimi, a former Algerian foreign minister and U.N. official said in the report.

The report did not identify individual accountability. U.N. spokeswoman Michele Montas told reporters that a separate "accountability panel" would determine in the coming weeks who was to blame and what consequences should follow.

WEAKNESS

It said that although Algerian authorities had provided the United Nations with effective security for 20 years, this proved inadequate on Dec. 11.

The lack of a close working relationship between the two prevented better security cooperation, it said. "This weakness could and should have been at least partially offset by pro-active support from" Veness's department in New York.

The department needed to address "as a matter of priority" accountability, leadership and internal management and oversight. It was also inadequate in responses to warnings and security-related information and had insufficient resources.

Management had ignored warnings about potential threats in Algiers, had not supported security efforts by U.N. officials there and had not approached Algeria's U.N. mission to seek better protection for the building, it said.

U.N. employees had "limited confidence" in the security management system, it added, and the 75 percent of field staff worldwide who were locally employed felt that they were not protected as well as international staff. Fourteen of the 17 staff who died in Algiers were Algerians.

A group called Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb claimed responsibility for the attack on the U.N. compound and another bombing in Algiers on the same day. At least 41 people were killed in the two attacks.

A key section of the report discussed why the United Nations was now coming under attack from militants, an issue first highlighted when the U.N. compound in Iraq was blown up in 2003, killing 15 staff and seven others.

The U.N., it said, "is being targeted by terrorists for what it is and what it represents." This was due to perceptions that the body had become "an instrument of powerful member states to advance agendas that serve their own interests, rather than those of the global community of nations.

"This is often broadly referred to as a pro-western agenda; others have called it an anti-Muslim agenda," it said. "Whatever it is called ... the fact is that in many places the U.N. is no longer seen as impartial and neutral." (Editing by Chris Wilson)

WaPo : Book Details U.S. Pressure On Allies Before War

Book Details U.S. Pressure On Allies Before War

By Colum Lynch | Washington Post Staff Writer | March 22, 2008; Page A01

UNITED NATIONS -- In the months leading up to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration threatened trade reprisals against friendly countries who withheld their support, spied on its allies, and pressed for the recall of U.N. envoys that resisted U.S. pressure to endorse the war, according to an upcoming book by a top Chilean diplomat.

The rough-and-tumble diplomatic strategy has generated lasting "bitterness" and "deep mistrust" in Washington's relations with allies in Europe, Latin America and elsewhere, wrote Heraldo Muñoz, Chile's ambassador to the United Nations, in his book "A Solitary War: A Diplomat's Chronicle of the Iraq War and Its Lessons," set for publication next month.

"In the aftermath of the invasion, allies loyal to the United States were rejected, mocked and even punished" for their refusal to back a U.N. resolution authorizing military action against Saddam Hussein's government, Muñoz wrote.

But the tough talk dissipated as the war effort worsened and President Bush came to reach out to many of the same allies that he had spurned. Muñoz's account suggests the U.S. strategy backfired in Latin America, damaging the administration's standing in a region that has long been dubious of U.S. military intervention.

Muñoz details key roles by Chile and Mexico, the Security Council's two Latin members at the time, in the run-up to the war. Then-U.N. ambassadors Juan Gabriel Valdés of Chile and Adolfo Aguilar Zínser of Mexico helped thwart U.S. and British efforts to rally support among the council's six undecided members for a resolution authorizing the U.S.-led invasion.

The book portrays Bush personally prodding the leaders of those six governments -- Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Guinea, Mexico and Pakistan -- to support the war resolution, a strategy aimed at demonstrating broad support for U.S. military plans, despite the looming French threat to veto the resolution.

In the weeks preceding the war, Bush made several appeals to Chilean President Ricardo Lagos and Mexican President Vicente Fox to rein in their diplomats and support U.S. war aims. "We have problems with your ambassador at the U.N.," Bush told Fox at a summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation in Los Cabos, Mexico, in late 2002.

"It's time to bring up the vote, Ricardo. We've had this debate too long," Bush told the Chilean president on March 11, 2003.

"Bush had referred to Lagos by his first name, but as the conversation drew to a close and Lagos refused to support the resolution as it stood, Bush shifted to a cool and aloof 'Mr. President,' " Muñoz wrote. "Next Monday, time is up," Bush told Lagos.

Senior U.S. diplomats sought to thwart a last-minute attempt by Chile to broker a compromise that would delay military action for weeks, providing Iraq with a final shot at demonstrating that it had fully complied with its disarmament requirements.

On March 14, 2003, less than one week before the eventual invasion, Chile hosted a meeting of diplomats from the six undecided governments to discuss its proposal. But U.S. ambassador John D. Negroponte and then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell moved quickly to quash the initiative, warning their governments that the effort was viewed as "an unfriendly act" designed to isolate the United States. The diplomats received calls from their governments ordering them to "leave the meeting immediately," Muñoz writes.

Aguilar-Zínser, who died in 2005, was finally forced out of the Mexican government after publicly accusing the United States of treating Mexico like its "back yard" during the war negotiations. Valdés was transferred to Argentina, where he served as Chile's top envoy, and Muñoz, a Chilean minister and onetime classmate of Condoleezza Rice at the University of Denver, was sent to the United Nations in June 2003 to patch up relations with the United States.

In the days after the invasion, the National Security Council's top Latin American expert, John Maistos, invited Muñoz to the White House to convey the message to Lagos, that his country's position at the United Nations had jeopardized prospects for the speedy Senate ratification of a free-trade pact. "Chile has lost some influence," he said. "President Bush is truly disappointed with Lagos, but he is furious with Fox. With Mexico, the president feels betrayed; with Chile, frustrated and let down."

Muñoz said subsequent ties remained tense at the United Nations, where the United States sought support for resolutions authorizing the occupation of Iraq. He said that small countries met privately in a secure room at the German mission that was impervious to eavesdropping. "It reminded me of a submarine or a giant safe," Muñoz said in an interview.

The United States, he added, expressed "its displeasure" to the German government every time they held a meeting in the secure room. "They couldn't listen to what was going on."

Muñoz said that threats of reprisals were short-lived as Washington quickly found itself reaching out to Chile, Mexico and other countries to support Iraq's messy postwar rehabilitation. It also sought support from Chile on issues such as peacekeeping in Haiti and support for U.S. efforts to drive Syria out of Lebanon. The U.S.-Chilean free trade agreement, while delayed, was finally signed by then-U.S. Trade Representative Robert B. Zoellick in June 2003.

Muñoz said that Rice, as secretary of state, called him to ask for help on a U.N. resolution that would press for Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon. The United States had secured eight of the nine votes required for adoption of a resolution in the Security Council. Muñoz had received instructions to abstain. "I talked to [Lagos], and he listened to my argument, and we gave them the ninth vote," he said.

CBC : Ahmadinejad's planned UN speech draws fire

Ahmadinejad's planned UN speech draws fire

September 18, 2007 | 3:25 PM ET

Washington has reluctantly granted a visa for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to address the UN next week, but a Republican presidential candidate says the Iranian president should instead be handed an indictment.

The White House said Ahmadinejad was given the visa for travel to the United States, but will not be permitted to go more than 40 kilometres from the UN headquarters in New York City.

Both the invitation to address the General Assembly on Sept. 25 and the U.S. government's decision to allow Ahmadinejad into the country drew fire from U.S. Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

"If President Ahmadinejad sets foot in the United States, he should be handed an indictment under the Genocide Convention," he wrote in a letter to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Monday.

Romney cited Ahmadinejad's much-publicized verbal attacks on Israel, support for the Lebanese-based militant organization Hezbollah and his "pursuit of nuclear weapons capabilities."

Ahmadinejad will leave for New York on Sunday, give his address and then return to Iran on Sept. 29, the Associated Press reported.

He has addressed the General Assembly twice before. His speech in September of 2006 included attacks on the U.S. and Britain for their policies opposing Iran's nuclear program.

The United Nations' 62nd General Assembly convened on Tuesday.

With files from the Associated Press