Who killed Hammarskjold?

Ndola, a town in the British colony of Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia), not far from the Congo border.
The plane had flown from Leopoldville (now Kinshasa) and was taking Dag Hammarskjold, the UN secretary-general, and his entourage, on a mission to try to bring peace to Congo.
It was reported that only one of the 16 passengers was found alive, Harold Julien, chief of security, who died six days later.
Questions were asked as strange details of the crash emerged. Given that Ndola air traffic control had seen the plane flying overhead and had granted the pilot permission to land, why did the airport manager close down the airport?
Why did Lord Alport, the British high commissioner in Salisbury (now Harare, the Zimbabwean capital), who was at the airport, insist that the secretary-general must have decided “to go elsewhere”?
Why did it take until four hours after daybreak to start a search, even though local residents, policemen and soldiers reported seeing a great flash of light in the sky shortly after midnight?
Why was the missing aircraft not found for a full 15 hours, even though it was just eight miles away from the airport where it had been expected to land?
What about the second plane that had been seen to follow the secretary general’s aircraft?
Why did the survivor refer to an explosion before the crash?
Why did Hammarskjold have no burns, when the other victims were so badly charred?
How did he escape the intense blaze, which destroyed 75 to 80 percent of the fuselage?
Two days after the crash, the Rhodesian Federal Department of Civil Aviation set up an air accident investigation, as required by international civil aviation authorities.
The report concluded that the approach to the airport was normal and correct, except that it was about 1 700 feet lower than it should have been.
It stated that the evidence available did not allow for a “specific or definite cause” for the crash, because so much of the aircraft had been destroyed and there was so little information from the single survivor.
While it observed that pilot error was a possibility, it was unable to rule out the “wilful act of some person or persons unknown which might have forced the aircraft to descend or collide with the trees”.
This initial investigation was followed by two major public inquiries. The first was conducted by a Rhodesian Commission, which produced its report in February 1962.
It concluded that the crash was an accident, caused by pilot error.
The second major public inquiry was conducted by a UN commission.
Unlike the Rhodesian inquiry, it delivered an open verdict on the cause of the crash when it produced its report in April 1962.
It argued that, as no special guard was provided for the plane prior to its departure from Leopoldville Airport, an unauthorised approach to the aircraft for purposes of sabotage “cannot be excluded”: although the doors were said to have been locked when the plane was parked at Leopoldville, access was possible to the hydraulic compartment, the heating system and the undercarriage of the aircraft.
The commission added that: “It cannot exclude attack as a possible cause of the crash”.
Concern was expressed at the delay in the search and rescue procedures, particularly since the plane crashed not far from an airfield on which 18 Rhodesian military aircraft, capable of carrying out an air search, were stationed.
Controversy over the cause of the crash continued.
Thirty years later, international interest was revived by a letter written to the British newspaper, The Guardian, on 9 November 1992 by two former UN officials, George Ivan Smith and Conor Cruise O’Brien.
The heading of the letter made its contents clear – “Hammarskjold plane crash ‘no accident’.”
In order to investigate Smith’s and O’Brien’s findings, the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs authorised a further inquiry into the crash.
The inquiry, which was a small-scale investigation, was conducted by Bengt Rosio, formerly the Swedish consul and head of mission in the Congo in the early 1960s and then a career diplomat in the Swedish Foreign Service.
Rosio produced a report in 1993, in which he concluded that the “least improbable” cause for the crash was CFIT – “Controlled Flight Into Terrain”.
Accordingd to this theory, the pilot made an error in judgment regarding altitude, due to a sensory or optical illusion, which made him to fly too low and crash into the trees.
Rosio’s perception of the crash was not new, judging by a British official document from October 1961.
This records that after a nine-day visit to Ndola, Rosio visited the first secretary at the British embassy in Leopoldville and said he was “personally satisfied that the crash was an accident and had been due to pilot’s error”.
He then listed the reasons why Swedish experts were critical of the Rhodesian investigation.
Rosio’s purpose, reported the first secretary to the Foreign Office in London, “was I believe to help us and the Rhodesian authorities . . . and to give us the opportunity to avert subsequent criticism, particularly by the Afro-Asians”.
Not one of these investigations has laid to rest the continuing suspicions about the crash of the plane that ended the lives of Secretary-General Hammarskjold and the other passengers and crew.
Conspiracy theories have proliferated – in the Press, in books, and especially on the Internet.
But, in addition, serious legitimate concerns have failed to go away, even after nearly 50 years.
In 2005, Major General Bjorn Egge, a Norwegian who had been the UN’s head of military information in the Congo in 1961, with the rank of a colonel, suggested that Hammarskjold had a round hole in his forehead that was possibly consistent with a bullet hole.
Now 87 years of age, Egge explained in a statement to the Norwegian newspaper, Aftenposten, that straight after the crash in 1961, he had been sent to Ndola to collect the secretary general’s cipher machine and his briefcase, and had been allowed to see his dead body in the mortuary. The body seemed to have a hole in the forehead.
Egge said: “He was not burnt as were the other . . . casualties, but had a round hole in his forehead. On photos taken of the body, however, this hole has been removed. I have always asked myself why this was done. Similarly, the autopsy report has been removed from the case papers. Again, I ask why?”
He added: “When I saw Hammarskjold’s body at the hospital, two British doctors were present, but not very willing to co-operate. However, I noticed the hole in Hammarskjold’s forehead in particular.”
Egge qualified his statement carefully in an interview with Aftenposten 10 days later.
He said there was no tangible evidence that Hammarskjold’s death was the result of a conscious act by a third party, but that circumstantial evidence pointed in this direction.
There have been ongoing suspicions, too, about the bullets found in the bodies of two of the security guards; the presence of these bullets were attributed by the Rhodesian inquiry report to the explosions of cartridge cases in the fire.
But at the time, the bullets led to considerable suspicion, expressed in particular by Major C.F. Westrell, a Swedish explosives expert.
“From my experience,” said Westrell, “I can firmly state that ammunition for rifles, heavy machine-guns and pistols cannot, when heated by fire, eject bullets with sufficient force for the bullets to get into a human body.”
He based this statement on the results of some large-scale experiments to investigate the danger for firemen in approaching burning ammunition stores.
His opinion was shared by Arne Svensson, chief of the technical department of the police in Stockholm, who said that if bullets were found in any of the victims of the air crash, they must have passed through the barrel of a weapon.
He also said that if a security guard had had an ammunition pouch placed close to his body and the ammunition was exploded by the heat of the fire, the walls of the pouch would have diminished the power of the explosion.
In such circumstances, it is almost impossible for the bullets to go through clothes. These suspicions about the bullets have persisted.
Questions have also been asked about holes in the aircraft: whether or not they had been caused by bullets.
One of these holes was a perforation in the nose dome, with a fracture immediately below it; this was described by the Forensic Ballistics Department of the Northern Rhodesian Police as damage caused by impact, with the qualification that it was “extremely difficult, if not impossible, to ascertain with absolute accuracy the cause”.
A small hole was discovered in the cockpit window frame, approximately one centimetre in diameter; after examination by microscope, it was decided that the hole had “not been caused by a bullet, but most probably by an object with jagged point”.
Some rumours relate specifically to the crash scene.
According to the Northern News, the Northern Rhodesian daily newspaper, Hammarskjold was found leaning against an anthill, in a seated position.
This has been the consensus since 1961 and at the crash site near Ndola, now a memorial to Hammarskjold, there are steps to the top of this anthill and a platform from which one can look out over the neighbourhood.
Another rumour is that the secretary-general survived the crash and crawled away from the aircraft, using vegetation to propel himself forward.

PM Roy Welensky’s archives
It is important to sift through the many rumours and theories about what happened and to establish what is fact and what is myth, so far as possible.
This is extremely difficult, given the passage of nearly 50 years since the crash: documentation has disappeared and key witnesses have passed away.
But this difficulty was greatly diminished by the discovery of crucial archive material in the library of Rhodes House, the centre of Commonwealth and African Studies at Oxford University.
This material belongs to the archive of Sir Roy Welensky, who was prime minister of the British territory of the Central African Federation, comprising Northern Rhodesia, Southern Rhodesia and Nyasaland (now independent Zambia, Zimbabwe and Malawi) between 1957 and 1963.
The Federation had a parliamentary system but the franchise was confined to the white minority.
It was under Welensky’s premiership that the Rhodesian investigation into Hammarskjold’s death took place.
Most of the relevant files have been kept secret, but the archivists at Rhodes House decided to give me access because such a long period of time had elapsed and also because the matter of my inquiry was a serious one.
These files contain documentation collected in the course of the very first investigation into the crash: a medical report on the victims, including a précis of the autopsies; X-rays of the bodies of the dead; photographs of the bodies of the dead; plans of the crash site; and the firearms report.
It is clear from the photographs, which are in black and white, that many of the crash victims are so charred as to be unrecognisable; Hammarskjold’s body, on the other hand, has no burns at all.
There are six photographs of the secretary-general: three at the scene of the crash; three in the mortuary.
In the first three, he has been moved from his place of death and is lying on a stretcher, surrounded by scrub vegetation. He is wearing a white shirt with elegant cuff-links; his drill trousers are pale, with a slim black belt.
His left hand appears to be holding some leaves and twigs and his right wrist is encircled by a metal identity bracelet. Apart from some bloody marks on his face and the fact that his tie is pulled loose to the side of his neck, he looks almost immaculate and extremely dignified.
There is an object – which looks like a playing card – protruding from the ruffled tie (or possibly cravat) around Hammarskjold’s neck. It must have been this card that led to rumours at the time that the Ace of Spades – the “death card” – had been left on his body.
It is not possible to identify the card as the Ace of Spades on the basis of the photograph, but a civilian photographer at the scene claimed years later to have seen it. “Yes, D.H. did have the Ace of Spades in his shirt collar – no comment,” he recalled. “It was requested at that time not to mention this.”
It is unlikely that a journalist placed the card in Hammarskjold’s neck, since police officers ensured that the Press touched nothing in the wreck.
In the three photographs at the mortuary, Hammarskjold is laid out on a slab, undressed. The medical report was produced by the Rhodesian pathologists, H.D. Ross and J. Hillsdon Smith, and by Squadron Leader P.J. Stevens, a British aviation pathologist at RAF Halston who was sent out from Britain.
It constitutes a “Summary and Conclusions, with Discussion”, rather than the formal reports of the autopsies that were concluded: in effect, therefore, it is a précis of the collected data. The full autopsies themselves are not available in the Welensky archive or in any other archive that I have investigated.
This summary report was given to the Medical Board of Sweden, which appointed two Swedish pathologists , Dr A. Frykholm and Dr N. Ringertz, to examine the findings.
All this documentation is of crucial importance for any examination of the circumstances surrounding Hammarskjold’s death.
However, I was aware that I did not have the skills necessary to examine and analyse this material. For help, I turned to three experts, all on the UK Register of Expert Witnesses.

Expert Witness 1
My first expert is a consultant pathologist: Dr Robert Ian Vanhegan, FRC-Path, who has contributed to definitive textbooks and journals in his field and been a lecturer at the University of Oxford; he has 20 years experience of performing autopsies, including military and gunshot injuries.
For the purpose of the Hammarskjold investigation, Dr Vanhegan examined the summary medical report. He noted, however, that this report “gives only a précis of each autopsy and does not include a copy of a full report”; it was possible, therefore, that important negative findings were not included.
He also examined the photographs of the body of Hammarskjold.
On the basis of the medical summary, he produced a report identifying the primary cause of death: multiple small areas of arterial bleeding within the secretary-general’s brain and a collection of blood over the right cerebral hemisphere.
It concludes that the secretary general died at the time of (or very soon after) impact, with the cessation of his blood circulation, as shown by the fact that there was minimal blood in the vicinity of his spinal and leg fractures.
Substantial collections of blood would have built up had he lived.
The extent of his cerebral injuries alone, as recorded in the medical report, suggests that if he had been alive for a short period of time after the crash, he would have been unconscious.
Having studied the photographs closely, Dr Vanhegan discounted the belief that Hammarskjold was holding leaves: “What appears to be vegetation in association with the left hand clearly is beneath the outer surface of the fingers (ie, not held in the palm).” This disqualifies the theory that the secretary general crawled out of the aeroplane with the help of leaves and twigs.
There are further reasons to reject the crawling theory: there are no stains left by crushed vegetation or earth on the front of his clothing, which is pale; and he had suffered a spinal cord transaction, which “would have left his lower limbs paralysed and made it unlikely that he would have been anle to crawl”.
Moreover, it is unlikely that he would have lived long enough to crawl away from the point of impact or subsequent fire, which would have taken some time.
Dr Vanhegan made an interesting discovery. In one of the photographs at the scene, there is “a peculiar, almost circular, area of pallor associated with the right orbit” – that is, a whited-out area around the eye. This is seen again in one of the photographs at the mortuary: a peculiar circular area of sharply defined pallor associated with the right orbit, within which there appears to be an “abrasion” in the region of the mid-eyebrow.
Unable to explain these areas of pallor in the two affected photographs, Dr Vanhegan offers an intriguing hypothesis: “This could be a crude attempt photographically to “brush out” detail.
Presumably the extreme pallor has developed over the 50 years since the photographs were taken and then re-touched, if this is what happened. At the time, any such re-touching presumably achieved a natural effect, since there is no reference in any documentation to photographs with a marked contrast in colour around the right eye.
It is not possible to compare the images showing this pallor with any other image of the right side of his face, since the right side of the face is not shown in the other four photographs. The other two photographs at the scene were taken from Hammarskjold’s left, with the effect of obscuring the right side of the face.
In other two photographs at the mortuary, one shows the back of his head and, in the other, the right side of the face is concealed by the hand of the right arm, which is raised over his shoulder; this am, which has rigor mortis, is not in the same position as the arm at the scene, where it is at some remove from his face.
The hypothesis that these two photographs were “doctored” would be consistent with Major General Egge’s concern that the secretary general had a round hole in his forehead, which had been removed in photographs taken of the body.
In a further statement to Aftenposten, Egge stated that a Norwegian historian, Dr Bodil Katarina Naevdal, obtained a photograph of the body and had it analysed by crime scene technicians; they established that Hammarskjold’s forehead had been touched up in the photograph.
The theory of “doctoring” would also be consistent with the experience of Knut Hammarskjold, the secretary general’s nephew, who flew to Ndola immediately after his uncle’s death in 1961.
The Northern Rhodesian police gave him a set of photographs of his uncle’s body in the mortuary, which showed him with a smooth forehead; but soon afterwards, a young policeman named David Appleton discreetly took him aside and gave him another set, in a manila envelope. Appleton quietly commented: “You may find these interesting.” In this set of photographs, injuries to the head were visible.

Expert Witness 2
My second expert is Peter Franks, LLB, a highly respected firearms and ballistic consultant, who is also a qualified lawyer. Mr Franks has trained military and police units around the world and is qualified to comment on all aspects of firearms, ranging from the reconstruction of crime scenes to comments on gunshot injuries.
For the purpose of his evaluation, Mr Franks studied the ballistics and ammunition report written by R.H. Els for the Forensic Ballistics Department in the Northern Rhodesia Police, which looks at the firearms and 342 bullets found at the crash site and includes photographs of the firearms and ammunition recovered.
Mr Franks also examined the xrays of the bodies with bullets and catridge fragments; the medical report where there is discussion of gunshot wounds; photographs of the deceased; and plans and photographs of the scene.
He was conscious, however, that he was reliant on material that was second-hand, none of which he was able to check out himself; if any of this information was inaccurate, it would affect his conclusions.
In the photographs of Hammarskjold, he examined the visible injuries that might be construed as gunshot wounds and concluded that most of the wounds were produced by cuts of blunt trauma injury. The only visible injury which could be a bullet or projectile wound, is the one under the secretary general’s chin.
“The wound under the chin is upon close examination elongated (oval) and not round, and whilst that does not preclude it from being a bullet wound, I am not attracted to the idea that this was so.”
Mr Franks noted that a Smith & Wesson (M12 airweight) revolver was discovered close to Hammarskjold, which confirms the rumour that there was a revolver near the secretary general. It was strange, thought Mr Franks, that the revolver had been severely damaged by heat, yet Hammarskjold himself was unaffected by the blaze. It was also strange that no weapon was found with Sergeant Harold Julien, chief of security.
On the matter of the bullets in some of the victims’ bodies, which are visible in xrays, Mr Franks does not share Westrell’s view that explosions in the fire cannot cause bullets to penetrate the body.
Under normal conditions when cartridges are placed on or in a fire, he said, it is usually the cartridge case that will move at high velocity when the cartridge explodes; but there are circumstances when the cartridge case is restricted, so that the bullet will be propelled out of the case at some speed.
He is satisfied with the verdict of the Rhodesian police report that the penetration of bullets was the result of the explosions in the fire, since the bullets have no “stria” – that is, rifling marks showing that they went through the barrel of a gun.
But he had a number of concerns. One of these related to the injuries suffered by Serge Barrau, a bodyguard, who was severely burnt in the crash. The xrays reveal that there were one or two cartridge percussion caps in the soft tissue of his right upper arm; a number of fragments of cartridge case in his abdomen; and a number of cartridge percussion caps in the soft tissue around the right hip.
Mr Franks was at a loss to find an explanation for these injuries, since neither firearms nor ammunition were discovered in his immediate vicinity. Yet all the firearms-related projectiles in his body were percussion caps or fragments of cartridge cases – and for these small items to have enough energy to enter his body, even over a small distance, they would have had to travel at high velocity.
This means that the weapons must have been nearby at the time the ammunition exploded, otherwise the objects would not have been able to penetrate the body.
Since Barrau was a bodyguard, commented Mr Franks, he would be expected to have had a firearm in close proximity – “indeed with spare ammunition – so a holster and spare rounds on his person. This would have it possible for him to have the wounds/injuries he has”. But, he added, “there were no weapons or ammunition or cartridge cases or fragments.”
The only explanation he could offer as that maybe Barrau’s body was moved prior to the crash site being investigated by the Rhodesian police.
In the case of Per Persson, a Swedish soldier, the picture is again complicated, since the bullets recovered from his body were all 9mm – not 0.38, the ammunition used by the revolver he is likely to have worn in a shoulder holster. However, the bullets could have come from other weapons found close to the soldier, which used 9mm ammunition.
Mr Franks examined the plan of the wreckage and plotted the approximate location of firearms and ammunition. Generally, they were distributed throughout the length of the wreckage in an explicable manner, but with two puzzling exceptions.
One of these was that the two sub-machine guns at the site, with appropriate magazines and ammunition, were discovered near the two pilots – but at some distance from the two soldiers on the aircraft, Stig Hjelte and Per Persson. This was odd, since the sub-machine guns and ammunition would almost certainly have been issued to the two soldiers on board.
A Smith & Wesson 0.38 revolver also caused Mr Franks some concern. Looking at the photograph of the revolver, showing the cylinder swung out in an open position, he noticed that there was a firing pin indent in one of the cartridges. This meant that the weapon must have been discharged and a shot fired.
Franks rejected the possibility that it had been accidentally discharged since Smith & Wesson revolvers have an in-built safety feature and cannot be fired without the trigger being pulled. “Not even an air crash would cause such a discharge,” commented Mr Franks, who is an expert on the construction, components and safety mechanisms of Smith & Wesson (and also Colt).
The photograph of this weapon reveals, too, that at least one of the cartridge cases was removed from its original chamber and replaced after the gun was discharged. This is evident from an indent across the primer, caused by heat forcing the cartridge case back against the recoil shield of the weapon as it discharged.
The fact that this indent can no longer be matched to the shape of the recoil shield indicates its removal and replacement. The only possible explanation, concluded Mr Franks, was that it was removed and replaced “following initial inspection but prior to the photograph being taken”.
There is reason to suspect similar tampering before the photograph of an official police Colt 0.38 special was taken. The initial explosion appeared to have opened the weapon, exposing its cylinder, so that all the cartridges in the revolver appear to have exploded from heat. Yet Mr Franks could determine that one cartridge had been moved prior to being photographed and then replaced for the photograph.
In the case of another Smith & Wesson revolver, one of the cartridge chambers is empty and there is no evidence in the chamber that a cartridge was blown out in the crash or the fire. Mr Franks was puzzled by this. He noted that it was common practice in the 1960s for bodyguards to leave empty the chamber under the hammer of a revolver, for safety purposes – but this was not necessary with this particular, very safe, revolver.
Mr Franks’ final query relates t the variety of ammunition. He noted that on the one hand, the bodyguards carried “up to-date, excellent weapons”. But some of the ammunition that was found spread across the crash site had been discontinued just prior to the Second World War, while other ammunition was from 1951 and 1956.
“I would have expected that such a high profile VIP, with a professional unit of bodyguards, would have the best equipment,” commented Mr Franks. “So why would they be carrying old stock 0.38 ammunition?”
Moreover, the ammunition was mixed: “It is normal for ammunition to be issued in a batch, so I would have expected all of them to have Winchester or Remington ammunition.”
It would be extremely strange, he reflected, “that the bodyguard team should use various manufacturers’ ammunition and even stranger that it is quite old. There is no real explanation for that. Nor is it very professional, because older ammunition becomes less reliable.”
On the specific issue of the holes in the aircraft, Mr Franks concluded that these were not caused by bullets. He added that the photographs are not clear, even when enlarged – but even so, at this stage he “would have to say no”.
Finally, although it was outside his remit, Mr Franks dismissed the theory that Hammarskjold was found leaning against an ant-hill. He pointed out the spot of the wreckage plan showing where Hammarskjold was found; but no ant-hill is indicated there, even though ant-hills are shown on the plan.
There are other indications that he could not have been leaning against an ant-hill: there is no blood on the front of his shirt, which there would have been if he was sitting up – in such a case, gravity would have caused the blood to run down his face on to the shirt. In fact, the photographs show that the blood from his facial wounds trickled down the sides of his face, towards his ears.
Mr Franks made a final point on this topic: that the secretary general’s right arm has rigor mortis and is lifted upwards; this would not have been possible if he was leaning against an anti-hill.

Expert Witness 3
My third expert is Peter Sutherst, a forensic photographic expert with over 50 years of experience, who has supplied testimony in numerous police and [UK] Ministry of Defence inquiries.
Mr Sutherst was puzzled that there is no photograph of Hammarskjold’s body in situ. “You would expect to find this,” he told me. An aircraft accident investigation ought to produce photographs to show where the bodies were found.
For an initial investigation, it is usual procedure for the bodies to be left in situ, so that there can be an examination of where the bodies are in relation to the aircraft. Then a chart is produced showing where the bodies are – “but they would need pictures to verify it. In the forensic service, you put a flag to show even where a bit of body is”.
In fact, there are photographs of all the bodies in situ in the relevant file – but not that of Hammarskjold, which was photographed only on a stretcher at the crash site, nor that of his bodyguard, Bill Ranallo.
This is strange, commented Mr Sutherst, since the post mortem photographs were done professionally and all the photographs of the secretary general are of high quality. The photographer was likely to have had a supply of additional film if needed and in the case of the crash scene, the photographs were evidently taken during daylight, so there would have been no need for a flash.
The lack of a photograph of Hammarskjold’s body in situ is all the more odd given that a “wreckage plan” was produced to show where the bodies were found – all of them, including those of the secretary general and Ranallo.
Mr Sutherst also noted that there was no mention in the medical report of the leaves and twigs, or of the playing card tucked into the secretary general’s neck. These findings, he argued, would be expected in a post-mortem report; in any case, details are given of his appearance in other respects, such as his clothing.

Conclusion
The careful observations made by my three expert witnesses dismiss some, though not all, of the myths, rumours and theories surrounding the crash and Mr Hammarskjold’s death. It is easy to understand the origin of the theory that Hammarskjold crawled out of the aircraft, since the photographs of his body on the stretcher appear to show him holding leaves and twigs; but it is now clear that this was an impression accidentally created by the photograph.
But the expert’s observations also raise some new and unexpected questions. How did the belief develop that Hammarskjold was found leaning against an ant-hill? Where was he actually found, before being placed on a stretcher? Why was no photograph taken of his body in situ, for the purpose of the investigation?
Mr Franks was struck by the anomalies in the presentation of the firearms and ammunition; he was concerned, too, that the secretary general’s body was close to the burnt aircraft, but not at all burnt itself; also that his briefcase and cipher machine were not even charred.
“I could speculate forever on this,” he commented in a note to his conclusions. “It does not feel right – it smells of either a cover up (for whatever reason) or just simple incompetence.”
Dr Vanhegan suggested the possibility that two of the photographs were airbrushed to conceal detail. “It is beyond reason,” he noted in a discussion of the findings in his report, “that exactly the same sort of artefact would appear on exactly the same feature on widely separated frames (of film); and, again, even less likely had cut film or plates been used as negatives.”
If it is the case that the photographs were “doctored”, then it follows that an attempt was made to conceal some detail. But if so, what kind of detail? There is no mention in the medical report of any injury in the right orbit of Mr Hammarskjold’s face. But on the basis of the information provided by the medical report, the secretary general was killed by the impact of the crash – so why would there be any need to kill him? Was the evidence in the medical report altered too? Why was it decided not to include the full autopsies in the medical report? Who made these decisions?
Did any person or group of people, or any organisation or political party, have a reason to want Mr Hammarskjold out of the way? What was the political background to the sudden death of the secretary general and the other passengers and crew on that moonlit night in the centre of Africa?

Another twist
Officially, the wreckage of Hammarskjold’s plane, a DC-6B nicknamed Albertina, was found at 15.15 local time on 18 September 1961. But in fact, it was sighted and reported in the morning, many ours earlier.
According to an interview given 18 years later by Timothy Jiranda Kankasa, the