THE country’s former Chief Justice, Mohamed Chande Othman, has been appointed by the United Nations (UN) Secretary- General Antonio Guterres to review potential new information, including information from South Africa on the mysterious 1961 plane crash that killed U.N Secretary-General, Dag Hammarskjold.
UN deputy spokesman, Farhan Haq said
Friday that Mohamed Chande Othman, who recently retired as Tanzania’s
top judge, will lead the review which former UN Secretary-General Ban
Ki-moon called for in August and the General Assembly requested in a
resolution adopted in Dec 23.
Hammarskjold was on a peace mission to
newly independent Congo when his plane crashed in what is now Zambia.
The resolution asked the UN chief to appoint “an eminent person” to
review and assess the value of any potential new information “to
determine the scope that any further inquiry or investigation should
take and, if possible, to draw conclusions from the investigations
already conducted.”
An independent panel reviewing new
information about the crash said in July 2015 that the United States and
Britain retained some classified files, and that South Africa had not
responded to several requests for information.
The panel’s 99-page report put to rest
claims that Hammarskjold was assassinated after surviving the crash. But
it has long been rumoured that his DC-6 plane was shot down, and the
panel provided new information about a possible aerial attack or
interference.
Ban said in a note last August that
Britain again refused to release classified material in response to UN
requests for information. He said responses from the United States and
Belgium didn’t alter the panel’s conclusion that the possibility of an
aerial attack or interference should be pursued.
Ban’s note included a letter dated July
1, 2016 from South Africa’s UN Mission, saying the government fully
supports the UN investigation and “the Department of Justice and
Constitutional Development has directed that a search be undertaken for
any documents, records or information.”
The panel had cited documents from the
South African Institute for Maritime Research that refers to “Operation
Celeste,” purportedly to “remove” Hammarskjold with cooperation from the
then USA CIA Director Allen Dulles.
It was not able to conclude whether the
documents were authentic. Ban said the United Nations also received
additional information about Hammarskjold’s death after the panel’s
report.
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