Gà ¶ran Bjà ¶rkdahl, a Swedish aid worker whose father worked for the UN in Zambia, wrote in 2011 that he believed Hammarskjà ¶ld's death was a murder committed, in part, to benefit mining companies like Union Minià ¨re, after Hammarskjà ¶ld had made the UN intervene in the Katanga crisis.
Bjà ¶rkdahl based his assertion on interviews with witnesses of the plane crash near the border of the DRC with Zambia and on archival documents. In 2013 accident investigator Sven Hammarberg was asked by the International Commission of Jurists to investigate Hammarskjà ¶ld's death.
In his report Hammarberg concluded that the two pilots were fatigued, having been flying for over 17 hours, and that the hill they flew into was simply not marked on their charts.
In 2014, newly declassified documents revealed that the American ambassador to the Congo sent a cable to Washington D.C. warning that the plane could have been shot down by Belgian mercenary pilot Jan van Risseghem, commander of the small Katanga air force. Van Risseghem died in 2007.
On 16 March 2015, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appointed members to an Independent Panel of Experts to examine new information related to Hammarskjà ¶ld's death.
The three-member panel was led by Mohamed Chande Othman, the Chief Justice of Tanzania, and included Kerryn Macaulay (Australia's representative to the ICAO) and Henrik Larsen (a ballistics expert from the Danish National Police).
The panel's 99-page report, released 6 July 2015, assigned "moderate" value to nine new eyewitness accounts and transcripts of radio transmissions. Those accounts suggested that Hammarskjà ¶ld's plane was already on fire as it landed and that other jet aircraft and intelligence agents were nearby.
In 2016, the original documents from the 1998 South African investigation surfaced. Those familiar with the investigation cautioned that even if authentic, the documents could have been initially authored as part of a disinformation campaign.
In 2019, the documentary film Cold Case Hammarskjà ¶ld revealed that the previously named pilot Van Risseghem told a friend that he shot down Hammarskjà ¶ld's aircraft. The film also named a paramilitary white-supremacy group who claimed involvement. Van Risseghem had extensive ties to Britain, including a British mother and wife, had trained with the RAF, and was decorated by Britain for his service in the Second World War.
In Hammarskjà ¶ld's 1959 will he left his personal archive to the National Library of Sweden.
Personal life
Following his appointment as UN Secretary-General, Hammarskjà ¶ld carried a copy of the oath of office with him on his travels. It was found in one of his books in the Ndola crash site. Hammarskjà ¶ld was never married and had no children.
Spirituality and Markings
A spiritual quote by Dag Hammarskjà ¶ld engraved in the stone wall within the Peace Chapel of the International Peace Garden. In 1953, soon after his appointment as United Nations Secretary-General, Hammarskjà ¶ld was interviewed on radio by Edward R. Murrow.
In this talk Hammarskjà ¶ld declared:
But the explanation of how man should live a life of active social service in full harmony with himself as a member of the community of spirit, I found in the writings of those great medieval mystics [Meister Eckhart and Jan van Ruysbroek] for whom 'self-surrender' had been the way to self-realization, and who in 'singleness of mind' and 'inwardness' had found strength to say yes to every demand which the needs of their neighbours made them face, and to say yes also to every fate life had in store for them when they followed the call of duty as they understood it.
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