Cape Town - South Africa's Truth Commission chairman, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, yesterday released documents which he said suggested a western plot was behind the death of the UN secretary-general in 1961. "The commission has discovered . . . documents discussing the sabotage of the aircraft in which the UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold died on the night of September 17th to 18th, 1961," Dr Tutu told a news conference before leaving to spend a year in the US.
The letters, headed the South African Institute for Maritime Research - said to be a front company for the South African military - include references to the US CIA and the British MI5 security service. Dr Hammarskjold and 15 other people were killed when their aircraft crashed entering Zambia, where the UN head was due to meet rebel leader Moise Tshombe to negotiate a truce in the then Congolese civil war. He had appointed Dr Conor Cruise O'Brien as UN trouble-shooter in the secessionist province of Katanga.