He had arranged to meet with the Katangese separatist leader, Moïse Tshombe, whose forces were backed by Western political and mining interests not eager for Mr. Hammarskjold to succeed. PhotoThe official inquiries that immediately followed suggested that pilot error was the cause, but one of the reports, by the United Nations Commission of Investigation in 1962, said that sabotage could not be ruled out. Since then, independent investigators and academics have spent years collecting and scrutinizing evidence that had been dismissed or suppressed. While Judge Othman said in his last report that they had provided some information, he also suggested that Western governments had resisted disclosing their full knowledge. Theories about the cause of the crash include pilot miscalculations of altitude, sabotage and an attack from a warplane flown by a mercenary pilot for the secessionists.

Source: New York Times March 27, 2018 22:07 UTC