NEW YORK
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Monday appointed a panel of experts to investigate new information related to the mysterious 1961 death of former UN chief Dag Hammarskjold.
The independent panel was requested as part of a General Assembly resolution, unanimously adopted in December, which cited new evidence and asked for the release of any relevant records about the airplane crash in which he was killed.
The Swedish statesman, who served as second secretary-general of the United Nations from 1953 until his death, was travelling to Congo on a peace mission when the DC-6 airliner carrying him crashed near the town of Ndola in what is today Zambia on the night of Sept. 17 to 18, 1961.
He was trying to forge a peace deal with separatists in the mineral-rich province of Katanga in the newly-independent Congo, whose forces UN peacekeepers were fighting.
Ban's office said in a statement that the panel, led by Tanzanian jurist Mohamed Chande Othman, would present its report to the Secretary-General no later than June 30 on the "probative value" of the new information.
The panel also includes Kerryn Macaulay of Australia and Henrik Larsen of Denmark.
The new information related to the crash include those published in the 2011 book, "Who Killed Hammarskjold?" which suggested that the plane was shot down by mercenaries fighting in the civil war between the Soviet-backed Congolese government in Kinshasa and separatists in Katanga, backed by mining corporations.
The British daily, The Guardian, also published a 2011 report, citing the research of a Swedish diplomat, which pointed to the possibility that a second plane had been close to the aircraft carrying Hammarskjold.
A UN inquiry in 1962 failed to find the cause of the crash.
