Middle Eastern Interventions in Africa: Did Nasser Have a Hand in Dag Hammarskjöld’s Death?

[TomSea]

Middle Eastern Interventions in Africa: Did Nasser Have a Hand in Dag Hammarskjöld’s Death?

A U.N. investigative report, submitted to the General Assembly on September 5, 2017, has rekindled long dormant allegations that the September 1961 death of U.N. secretary-general Dag Hammarskjöld in a mysterious plane crash was not the result of a tragic accident but of a political assassination.[1] Hammarskjöld was on his way to Ndola in the former Rhodesia, to mediate a solution to the 1960s Congo crisis. While the report did not identify the likely culprits, it nevertheless sought additional information from the “usual suspects”—the former colonial powers in the region (e.g., Belgium, Britain, and France) and the rival superpowers in the Cold War, in which the Congo crisis was implicated.

But there is another possible culprit, who has surprisingly evaded scrutiny: Gamal Abdel Nasser. The ferocious clashes between the Egyptian president and Hammarskjöld over a host of contested issues, from the Palestinian refugee problem to the Congo civil war, against the backdrop of Nasser’s hegemonic ambitions, suggest his possible implication in the secretary-general’s mysterious death.

Tragic Accident or Political Assassination?

No sooner had Hammarskjöld’s airplane crashed on the night of September 17-18, 1961, than the allegation of a premeditated assassination was made by none other than former U.S. president Harry Truman. “Dag Hammarskjöld was on the point of getting something done when they killed him,” he told The New York Times a day after the disaster. “Notice that I said, ‘When they killed him.’”[2] As the General Assembly left the matter open following the inconclusive findings of three immediate inquiries (two by the Rhodesian government, one by the U.N.), numerous hypotheses for the crash were made over the years with the possibility of foul play gaining currency with the passage of time and the surfacing of fresh evidential material. In the words of a comprehensive study published on the fiftieth anniversary of the crash, “Whatever the details, [Hammarskjöld’s] death was almost certainly the result of sinister intervention.”[3]

Read more at: https://www.meforum.org/articles/2018/did-nasser-have-a-hand-in-dag-hammarskjold%E2%80%99s-deat

That's really obscure history but I'd always heard of Hammarskjöld, fascinating time of history.

They had a Suez canal crisis back around that time as well.