The UN secretary-general said ‘this may be our last chance to find the truth’ behind 1961 death of his predecessor as UK insists it has no further information

The UN secretary-general has called for the appointment of “eminent person or persons” to pursue an investigation into the death of his predecessor, Dag Hammarskjöld in a mysterious 1961 air crash in central Africa.



Declaring “this may be our last chance to find the truth” Ban Ki-moon sent a note to the general assembly, saying there were enough unanswered questions arising from the crash to warrant further investigation and that the responses of the UK, US and Belgium (the major powers in the region at the time) to a UN request for archive material “do not appear to alter” that conclusion.

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

In particular Ban noted that the UK had stuck to its position last year that it had no further documentation to show the UN investigation. He appended a letter sent in June by the British permanent representative to the UN, Matthew Rycroft, saying “our position remains the same and we are not able to release the materials in question without any redactions”.

Rycroft added “the total amount of information withheld is very small and most of the redactions only consist of a few words”.

The wording of the letter echoed a similar letter, turning down the UN request for more information, the UK sent in June 2015, which said that “no pertinent material” had been found in a “search across all relevant UK departments”.

In reply the UN legal counsel, Miguel de Serpa Soares, reminded Rycroft of the shared responsibility of the UN and its member states “to pursue the full truth” about Hammarskjöld’s death, and asked him to confirm that the search of “all relevant UK departments” included security and intelligence agencies.

In reply, Rycroft simply quoted the former UK foreign secretary Philip Hammond telling parliament that the foreign office had “coordinated a search across all relevant UK government departments”.

“I think the British response is extraordinary. It’s very brisk and curt and evasive,” said Susan Williams, a British historian at the School of Advanced Study, University of London, whose book Who Killed Hammarskjöld: The UN, the Cold War and White Supremacy in Africa, revealed new evidence that helped persuade the UN to open a new investigation into the crash near Ndola, in what was then the British colony of Northern Rhodesia, now Zambia.

Part of that evidence was a report from a British intelligence officer, Neil Ritchie, who was in the area at the time of the crash and who was trying to organise a meeting between Hammarskjöld and a rebel leader from neighbouring Congo, where the UN secretary general was trying to broker a truce.

“This was British territory and they had a man on the ground. It doesn’t make them responsible for the crash but it does indicate they knew a lot of what was going on,” Williams said, adding it was “highly unlikely” that Ritchie’s report which she found in an archive at Essex University, was the only British intelligence report coming the area at the time.

In suggesting that the UN investigation continues under “an eminent person or persons” chosen by the general assembly or himself, Ban said: “Seeking a complete understanding of the circumstances is our solemn duty to my illustrious and distinguished predecessor, Dag Hammarskjöld, to the other members of the party accompanying him, and to their families.”