UN releases follow-up to report on the mysterious death of former UN chief Hammarskjöld
Both Ban and the General Assembly have previously stated that a further inquiry or investigation would be necessary to finally establish the facts of the matter.
The statement adds that any further inquiry or investigation would benefit from an assessment of potential new information, including from South Africa or other sources.
Additionally, Ban has recommended that the General Assembly appoint an eminent person or persons to review new information which may exist. Such person or persons would then be able to determine the scope that any further inquiry or investigation should take.
Recalling that Ban has said previously that the most likely source of any additional material would be the files and records of member states, the statement noted: “To this end [the Secretary-General] has again urged all Member States to continue to search for and disclose relevant documents and information.”
“Ultimately, it is for the General Assembly to decide on any further action,” it concluded.
Ban pointedly noted that the United Kingdom had maintained that its position from 2015 — that it had no further documentation to show the UN investigation — is still in effect today. Ban appended a letter sent in June by the British permanent representative to the UN, Matthew Rycroft, saying “our position remains the same and we are not able to release the materials in question without any redactions.”
Rycroft added that “the total amount of information withheld is very small and most of the redactions only consist of a few words.”
The Guardian notes that the wording of Rycroft’s letter was similar to the letter the United Kingdom sent the UN in June 2015, in which the United Kingdom turned down a UN request for more information. In the June 2015 letter, the United Kingdom told the UN that “no pertinent material” had been found in a “search across all relevant U.K. departments.”
In a sharp reply, Miguel de Serpa Soares, the UN legal counsel, advised Rycroft of the shared responsibility of the UN and its member states “to pursue the full truth” about Hammarskjöld’s death, and asked him to confirm that the search of “all relevant U.K. departments” included security and intelligence agencies.
Rycroft replied to Soares by quoting the former U.K. foreign secretary Philip Hammond, who told parliament that the foreign office had “coordinated a search across all relevant U.K. government departments.”
“I think the British response is extraordinary. It’s very brisk and curt and evasive,” Susan Williams told the Guardian. Williams, a British historian at the School of Advanced Study, University of London, is the author of Who Killed Hammarskjöld: The UN, the Cold War and White Supremacy in Africa (2011), which revealed new evidence that helped persuade the UN to open a new investigation into the crash near Ndola, in what was then the British colony of Northern Rhodesia, and is now Zambia.
Part of that evidence unearthed by Williams was a report from a British intelligence officer, Neil Ritchie, who was in the area at the time of the crash and who was trying to put together a meeting between Hammarskjöld and Moïse Tshombe, a rebel leader who was the president of breakaway Katanga region in neighboring Congo. Hammarskjöld was trying to broker a truce between the Congo government, let by Patrice Lumumba and supported by the Soviet Union and Cuba, and Katanga, which was supported by Belgium (openly) and the United States (covertly).
“This was British territory [where Hammarskjöld’s plane crashed] and they had a man on the ground. It doesn’t make them responsible for the crash but it does indicate they knew a lot of what was going on,” Williams told the Guardian, adding it was “highly unlikely” that Ritchie’s report, which she found in an archive at Essex University, was the only British intelligence report coming the area at the time.
