Hammarskjöld: Death of top UN official still shrouded in mystery

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_http://www.independent.ie/national-news/death-of-top-un-official-still-shrouded-in-mystery-2343685.html

On this weekend 49 years ago, the world was shaken by news of a mysterious air crash in Africa. The bodies of 16 people were recovered from the wreck. Some had multiple bullet wounds in their heads and bodies. The airport's handling of the pre-crash warnings was sub-standard. Other aircraft were seen in the area. Strange lights were reported over the airport. And a famous man, on a mission to prevent what might degenerate into a world war, was among the dead. It was September 18, 1961. And the dead man was Dag Hammarskjöld, secretary-general of the United Nations. His death shocked the world.

The previous afternoon, Hammarskjöld's DC-6B plane had left Leopoldville (now Kinshasa) in the Congo en route to Ndola in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia). He had arranged a meeting with Moise Tshombe, president of the rebel State of Katanga, which was now engaged in a war to become independent from the Congo.

Katangese soldiers were fighting UN peacekeeping forces sent in to prevent civil war. With the UK, the US and Belgium clandestinely helping the rebels, Russia making bellicose noises and a world war threatening, Hammarskjöld was trying to arrange a ceasefire.

In the early morning, the news came that his plane had crashed. At the time, I was in a crowded pressroom at UN HQ in Leopoldville. Senior UN officials and hardened war correspondents sobbed uncontrollably. Every one of them was of one mind. Hammarskjöld had been assassinated.

Ireland was deeply involved in the Congo crisis. Lt Gen Sean McKeown was in command of all UN peacekeeper troops there to support the government in its efforts to prevent Katanga from seceding. Dr Conor Cruise O'Brien was Hammarskjöld's special representative in Katanga. A battalion of Irish soldiers was engaged in heavy fighting. Only three days earlier, Trooper Pat Mullins from Kilbehenny, Co Cork, was killed in an ambush. And 150 Irish soldiers were prisoners of the Katangese.

What happened to Hammarskjöld and 15 others is still disputed. Former US president Harry Truman said bluntly that he was killed. Allegations that his plane had been shot down, deliberately given wrong instructions, or sabotaged, were never proven.

Thirty-seven years after the crash, the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission quoted recently discovered letters linking MI5, the CIA and the South African secret services with the crash, including the suggestion that a bomb was placed in the plane's wheel bay to explode when the plane touched down. And as recently as 2005, a Norwegian soldier who was the first UN official to see Hammarskjöld's dead body said it had a hole in the head that was air-brushed out of the post-mortem photos.

Hammarskjöld's death was regarded as a major blow to the UN. But the moral force that is the organisation's greatest weapon was greatly reinforced by what was seen as the assassination of a spiritual man who was regarded by some as the 'secular Pope'.

Only 47 when he died, Hammarskjöld came from a family with many generations of public service, his father having been prime minister of Sweden. Among his earliest decisions as secretary-general was to appoint only non-partisan and fair-minded officials to his 4,000 staff. His ultimate aim was to establish an independent UN force.

Hammarskjöld was a highly introspective man. He did not give interviews and I had to rely on the influence of Freddie Boland, that year's president of the General Council, to arrange for me to see him. He did not invite me to sit and reacted animatedly only when I asked him how he rated Ireland's contribution to the UN. He spoke highly of the way Ireland, as a non-aligned country, was able to act as an "honest broker" and help to solve many of the UN's problems. And he praised genuinely and enthusiastically Ireland's contribution to the UN's mission to the Congo.

Hammarskjöld kept what he called his 'journal' -- a combination of diary entries and spiritual thoughts cloaked in haiku-style poetry -- published after his death as Markings. In it, he wrote: "Everything will be all right when people stop thinking of the United Nations as a weird Picasso abstraction and see it as a drawing they made themselves."

He regarded his own writings as "negotiations with myself and with God". One such aphorism gives an idea of his tortuous mind:

Tomorrow we shall meet

Death and I --

And he shall thrust his sword

Into one who is wide awake.
 
There's a new documentary, Cold Case Hammarskjöld. I'm just superficially familiar with the case and the documentary meanders through related issues and characters to the point where Hammarskjöld is no longer the primary focus, but the second half gets very interesting.

...
The film moves to South Africa, where the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 1998 revealed a document with an outline for the assassination of Hammarskjöld. Brügger and Björkdahl want to trace the South African Institute for Maritime Research (SAIMR), the organization behind this document, through its believed leader, Keith Maxwell. Keith is rumored to have operated a number of medical clinics in the townships of South Africa, though he was not a medical doctor. The investigators believe SAIMR to have been a mercenary organization operating by order of MI-6 and the CIA, and involved in the Hammarskjöld assassination, but they cannot prove this despite recovering the first part of Maxwell's fictionalized autobiography. They also cannot explain the medical clinics, apart from Maxwell's strong interest in AIDS.

The final part of the film brings forward two new witnesses, claimed to be former SAIMR members or close relatives. These witnesses confirm that SAIMR was a clandestine mercenary organization. They claim SAIMR served the interests of white supremacy in Africa, and that it ran operations to administer the HIV virus to black people in South Africa and Mozambique through cover-up clinics, with the goal of eradicating them. Brügger and Björkdahl recover the second part of the autobiography of Maxwell, which confirms the involvement of SAIMR in the Hammarskjöld assassination. The first witness claims the playing card depicted in one of the photos of Hammarskjöld's corpse is internal code for CIA involvement.



The most interesting interview is with Alexander Jones, who says he was a SAIMR mercenary. He describes SAIMR as a clandestine mercenary organization for hire financed by foreign governments. He says one of SAIMR's purposes was to destabilize certain African countries. He estimates its size at over five thousand people. According to him both the military and South Africa's government were fully aware of SAIMR.

Although their main base of operations was Mozambique, he believes the orders actually came from the British government, that SAIMR was just a sub-unit of some British entity. He doesn't provide documentation but seems very knowledgeable about the whole thing. He also confirms the Ace of Spades as the CIA's "calling card".

Jones commenting the plan to take down Hammarskjöld's plane:
Option one was the bomb, to disable the plane, to bring it down. That would have been
choice number one. So that the plane crashes.

Number two, have the fighter jet around as a contingency, in the case that the bomb didn't do the damage that it did in the plan. Then, shoot the plane down.

Number three, have the contingency shooting from the ground to bring the plane down, and clean up.


Jones about why Hammarskjöld had to go:
Anybody that resisted any white form of... manipulation on the African continent, SAIMR was prepared to go and quell those for a price. At a cost.

And that was one thing that Dag Hammarskjold was totally against. And he wanted every country for the people of the country. And obviously, when you've got investments, when there's minerals, gold, diamonds, oil and all of that stuff... and we all know which countries... He was a threat.

[Cut to footage of Hammarskjold speaking]

We countered effectively efforts from all sides to make the Congo a happy hunting ground for national interests. To be a roadblock to such efforts is to make yourself the target of attacks from all those who find their plans thwarted.

[Back to Alexander Jones]

He was killed because he was going to change the way that Africa dealt with the rest of the world financially. And he was a threat.

And who's got the most to lose? Corporate. Corporate business worldwide. People are greedy. People want what others have got, and they don't want to pay for it. That's why they come to Africa. Because Africa seem to be easy and third world.

And now, Africa is starting to fight back. And I think it would have happened 30, 40 years ago, if Dag Hammarskjold had his way. Africa would have been a completely different continent today... if Dag Hammarskjold was allowed to live and follow through on his mandate.


The part about purposefully infecting people with HIV is shocking to consider. Jones explains that research labs would tell people they would receive medicine that prevented AIDS but actually it was designed to infect them with the disease. The "patients" were exclusively black people. He claims to have visited at least one of the clinics. Jones again:
So, you know, that's what I'm saying... What easier way to get a big guinea pig? That you live in an apartheid system... Black people have got no rights. They need medical treatment. There's a... white "philanthropist" coming in and saying, "You know what? I'll open up these clinics and I'll treat you. I'll do this..." in the meantime, you're actually... the wolf in sheep's clothing.
 
Just to link the threads, there's also two Truth Perspective shows about the case:


 
It's a really good documentary and I wasn't expecting it to go in the direction it did, such as information about biological weapons. The account that Alexander Jones presents brings to mind John Perkins' discription of how 'jackals' (i.e. death squads, assassins, coup plotters) operate in various countries.
 
There's a new documentary, Cold Case Hammarskjöld. I'm just superficially familiar with the case and the documentary meanders through related issues and characters to the point where Hammarskjöld is no longer the primary focus, but the second half gets very interesting.




The most interesting interview is with Alexander Jones, who says he was a SAIMR mercenary. He describes SAIMR as a clandestine mercenary organization for hire financed by foreign governments. He says one of SAIMR's purposes was to destabilize certain African countries. He estimates its size at over five thousand people. According to him both the military and South Africa's government were fully aware of SAIMR.

Although their main base of operations was Mozambique, he believes the orders actually came from the British government, that SAIMR was just a sub-unit of some British entity. He doesn't provide documentation but seems very knowledgeable about the whole thing. He also confirms the Ace of Spades as the CIA's "calling card".

Jones commenting the plan to take down Hammarskjöld's plane:



Jones about why Hammarskjöld had to go:



The part about purposefully infecting people with HIV is shocking to consider. Jones explains that research labs would tell people they would receive medicine that prevented AIDS but actually it was designed to infect them with the disease. The "patients" were exclusively black people. He claims to have visited at least one of the clinics. Jones again:

What you posted Courageous Inmate about Hammarskjöld reminded me of "De la Françafrique à la Mafiafrique" a book which is unfortunately not in English. It is from Francois Xavier Verschave. It explains how France murdered every single African leaders who wanted to genuinely transform their country and put dictators in their place. At some point, it gets ridiculous, not because what Verschave says is wrong, but because France's bodycounts is incredibly high. Anyone who showed a spark for goodness was killed. Every single one. If there's one person you should learn about, it is Jacques Foucart. He was essentially France's spy master, and well, a kind of assassin.

I've studied France's relationship with their former sub-Saharan colony a lot, and the way France dealt with them was psychotic. Heck, many wars in those countries were France's doing, including the war in Ivory Coast which ended in 2011.
 
Fascinating subject! I tried to look for this documentary but I just find trailers. Where can we see it?

Thanks!
 
I've studied France's relationship with their former sub-Saharan colony a lot, and the way France dealt with them was psychotic. Heck, many wars in those countries were France's doing, including the war in Ivory Coast which ended in 2011.

Thanks for giving a glimpse into this aspect of history, I have almost zero knowledge of it.

The documentary was also mentioned and talked about on Mind Matters. I just can't find the link to it. It was possibly discussed during one of the shows.

Thanks, I might have missed that one. I too have trouble finding specific segments that were discussed.

The account that Alexander Jones presents brings to mind John Perkins' discription of how 'jackals' (i.e. death squads, assassins, coup plotters) operate in various countries.

Good connection. The fact that these things have become more or less widespread knowledge and nothing changes just adds to the terror of the situation. Same with banking after 07/08.

Fascinating subject! I tried to look for this documentary but I just find trailers. Where can we see it?

You can also see a list of options on the official site. As for the other route, this one is a better client.
 
Thanks for giving a glimpse into this aspect of history, I have almost zero knowledge of it.



Thanks, I might have missed that one. I too have trouble finding specific segments that were discussed.



Good connection. The fact that these things have become more or less widespread knowledge and nothing changes just adds to the terror of the situation. Same with banking after 07/08.



You can also see a list of options on the official site. As for the other route, this one is a better client.
Thanks for the links.

If you are interested about how mad were the French in Africa there is a very good historical novel by Antonio Lozano "L'Affaire Sankara". But I don't see an English version, unfortunately. Lozano was an expert on Africa. In his book he talks about the assassination of Sankara but also about how France is responsable of the deaths of some people that wanted to free Africa from France. He makes a good map on how France was in Africa since specially after the Second World War, how they killed all of those who wanted to be free of colonisation, the massacres they did everywhere in their colonies, the murders, the misery they put on Africans, etc. Really it is an excellent book that received a price also. Very few people know this book because very few people know who was Sankara. He himself was surprised to see how few know what happened in Burkina Faso and also how many don't know what the French did in Africa. I was surprised to see how much information is in this book.
 
The part about purposefully infecting people with HIV is shocking to consider. Jones explains that research labs would tell people they would receive medicine that prevented AIDS but actually it was designed to infect them with the disease. The "patients" were exclusively black people. He claims to have visited at least one of the clinics.

This was the true shocker indeed :shock:
I've watched this doc yesterday and I really liked the style. I think it is also a very good documentary to watch with people who need an extra hand in their 'awakening' process. Lifting the veil, sort of say.
 
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