There is a “significant amount of evidence” a plane carrying then UN boss Dag Hammarskjold, which crashed in central Africa in 1961, was brought down by another aircraft, a new UN report has claimed.
According to The Guardian, the report delivered to current UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres last month includes previously undisclosed information provided by the American, British, Belgian, Canadian and German governments.
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The report's author, former Tanzanian chief justice Mohamed Chande Othman, was said to be “indebted for the assistance that he received, which uncovered a large amount of valuable new information”, the paper reports.
Hammarskjold, a Swedish diplomat who was appointed head of the UN in 1953, was on a mission to the Congo to broker a peace deal in the Katanga region following a rebellion backed by mining interests and European mercenaries when his plane crashed, killing him and 15 others.
A British inquiry at the time pointed to pilot error and a 1962 UN commission reached an open verdict. However, the crash remains one of aviation's biggest unsolved cases and, following numerous private investigations, a 2015 UN panel agreed there was enough new material to warrant reopening the case.
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