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Panel named to investigate 1961 death of UN Secretary-General Hammarskjold

Xinhua, March 17, 2015 Adjust font size:

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Monday announced the appointment of a three-member " Independent Panel of Experts" to assess new information on the 1961 death of former UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold in an airplane crash while on a peace mission in Africa.

There have been allegations over the years that the Swedish plane carrying the UN's second secretary-general, originally believed to have crashed because of pilot error, was instead shot down.

Farhan Haq, the deputy UN spokesman, said Ban appointed Mohamed Chande Othman, of Tanzania, Ms. Kerryn Macaulay, of Australia, and Henrik Larsen of Denmark to the new panel. Othman was named to lead the inquiry.

It would "review and assess" the value of the information " provided to the Secretary-General by the Hammarskjold Commission as well as any relevant records or information released by (UN) member states or by other sources," the spokesman said.

The panel is to begin its work March 30 and complete it with a report to Ban "no later than June 30."

The independent Hammarskjold Commission was established in 2012 by an international Enabling Committee to report whether members of the commission, four international jurists, found "in their view the evidence now available would justify the United Nations in reopening its inquiry," the commission website said.

The inquiry, the fourth since the plane crashed killing Hammarskjold, his party and the crew of the aircraft near Ndola, Northern Rhodesia, now Zambia, published its conclusion in September 2013.

"Does significant new evidence about Dag Hammarskjold's death exist? Undoubtedly it does," the report's conclusion said.

Last year, the 193-member UN General Assembly called for the UN chief to establish a panel to assess the material the commission studied. Endite