Dag Hammarskjöld death details may still be sealed, UN says

Key evidence about whether someone shot down the plane in which former United Nations secretary general Dag Hammarskjöld was killed in 1961 may remain sealed in documents held by several governments, a UN panel says.

The panel has submitted its report to UN chief Ban Ki-moon, saying  that in order to get at "the whole truth,"  the UN may need to "address remaining information gaps, including in the existence of classified material and information held by member states and their agencies''  that may help reveal the cause of the crash.

It is worth investigating whether the aircraft was shot down, the panel says. The crash killed Hammarskjöld and 15 others, including Canadian Alice Lalande,

It adds that this conclusion is based on new information including eyewitness testimony that there was a second aircraft – possibly a jet – in the sky close to Hammarskjöld's plane right before it went down.

Now it is up to the UN General Assembly to decide how to proceed, says Jan Eliasson, the UN deputy secretary general.

Hammarskjöld's plane crashed in a forested area about 14 km from the Ndola airport in Northern Rhodesia, now Zambia.

The 56-year-old Swedish diplomat was on his way to meet Congolese secessionist leader Moise Tshombé, who had declared the mineral-rich southeastern province of Katanga an independent state. The Congo had gained independence from Belgium just one year earlier, and Hammarskjöld was on a peace mission to try to keep the country united.

The three-member UN panel sent requests for information to Belgium, France, Germany, South Africa, the United States and the United Kingdom.

But Ban notes in a letter to the General Assembly that "in some cases, member states have not provided a substantive response, have not responded at all or have maintained the classified status of the documents in question despite the passage of time.''

Correspondence between the independent panel and the countries is included in an annex to the June report. "I intend to follow up with the member states concerned,'' Ban said.

The Swedish mission to the UN put forward a unanimously adopted resolution last December which ultimately led to Ban appointing the independent three-member panel to review new information that has come to light in recent years.

"I'm not saying it is a national trauma today but it certainly was at the time, and not just in Sweden. It was a huge event in the world given Dag Hammarskjöld's stature as an international statesman,'' said Sweden's ambassador to the United Nations, Olof Skoog.

"It's similar to John F. Kennedy getting shot in our national psyche. So it's huge, it's big!''

Skoog hopes Ban's latest call will bear fruit.

So far the requests have been at a "technical level," he said. "You know, you leave it to the archivist [to decide] whether this is classified or not. I think now the call has to be on a much more political level,'' he said. "And there is going to be a political cost for holding back that kind of information.''

Skoog said Sweden is committed to keeping the issue on the UN agenda.

Eliasson, the deputy secretary general, said the UN will take in any new information, but ultimately the decision on the way forward will have to come from the General Assembly.

"There are a number of options,'' he said. "You can reopen the investigation from the early '60s, you can ask for a new investigation, you can ask for an external investigator that pursues these issues.''

Eliasson was a young officer stationed on a Swedish naval ship in the Baltic Sea one day after his 21st birthday when he heard Hammarskjöld had died.

"Hammarskjöld was the person that symbolized Sweden's role in the world. So when he died it was an enormous shock for our nation,'' said Eliasson. "Every Swede knows exactly where they were on that day.''

He said the morning he learned of Hammarskjöld's death was the morning he decided to join the UN.