One of the outstanding mysteries of the twentieth century, and one
with huge political resonance, is the death of Dag Hammarskjöld and
his UN team in a plane crash in central Africa in 1961. Just minutes
after midnight, his aircraft plunged into thick forest in the British
colony of Northern Rhodesia (Zambia), abruptly ending his mission to
bring peace to the Congo. Across the world, many suspected sabotage,
accusing the multi-nationals and the governments of Britain, Belgium,
the USA and South Africa of involvement in the disaster. These
suspicions have never gone away. British High Commissioner Lord
Alport was waiting at the airport when the aircraft crashed nearby.
He bizarrely insisted to the airport management that Hammarskjöld
had flown elsewhere -- even though his aircraft was reported
overhead. This postponed a search for so long that the wreckage of
the plane was not found for fifteen hours. White mercenaries were at
the airport that night too, including the South African
pilot Jerry Puren, whose bombing of Congolese villages led, in his
own words, to 'flaming huts . . . destruction and death'. These
soldiers of fortune were backed by Sir Roy Welensky, Prime Minister
of the Rhodesian Federation, who was ready to stop at nothing to
maintain white rule and thought the United Nations was synonymous
with the Nazis. The Rhodesian government conducted an official
inquiry, which blamed pilot error. But as this book will show, it was
a massive cover-up that suppressed and dismissed a mass of crucial
evidence, especially that of African eye-witnesses. A subsequent UN
inquiry was unable to rule out foul play - but had no access to the
evidence to show how and why. Now, for the first time, this story can
be told. Who Killed Hammarskjöld follows the author on her
intriguing and often frightening journey of research to Zambia, South
Africa, the USA, Sweden, Norway, Britain, France and Belgium, where
she unearthed a mass of new and hitherto secret documentary and
photographic evidence.