TA的每日心情 | 奋斗 昨天 10:35 |
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签到天数: 2054 天 [LV.Master]无
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这案子联合国看来要重开调查了
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华尔街日报的文章,因为在付费墙后面,所以全文转贴在下面:
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UNITED NATIONS—The United Nations is considering reopening its investigation into the mysterious 1961 plane crash that killed then-U.N. chief Dag Hammarskjöld after new evidence of possible foul play emerged.8 F3 S; E/ d9 ^% o" m9 A
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The U.N. General Assembly put the case back on its agenda in March at the recommendation of Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon after more than half a century of speculation that the Swedish diplomat's plane was either sabotaged or shot down.
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$ a) u: J! m6 S1 q$ a7 ^Mr. Ban's recommendation came after a report by the independent Hammarskjöld commission, formed in 2012 with the participation of South African jurist Richard Goldstone. The report in September raised the possibility the National Security Agency and other intelligence agencies have a tape-recorded radio communication by a mercenary pilot who allegedly carried out an aerial attack on the secretary-general's plane. |7 B ]! N3 x
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The NSA told the commission that none of its searches produced any account of the events surrounding the plane crash. But it added that "two NSA documents have been located that are associated with the event," which it has decided to withhold.+ Z6 B( G: p1 O, r# D! B
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Mr. Hammarskjöld on his way to Northern Rhodesia—now Zambia—when his Swedish DC-6 airliner plunged into a forest 9 miles from the airport in the city of Ndola just past midnight on Sept. 18, 1961.
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; M9 _7 y! S6 m- ?& bHe had planned to negotiate a peace deal with Moise Tshombe, leader of the separatist Katanga province in the newly independent Congo. Mr. Hammarskjöld opposed Katanga leaving the Congo and U.N. troops were fighting Katanganese mercenaries about 100 miles away as Mr. Hammarskjöld was about to land.
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) ?7 ^& h% v9 T! `7 w' n( `- z( W( uThe U.N., Rhodesia and Sweden conducted separate investigations into the crash. Sweden and Rhodesia both concluded it was pilot error. The 1962 U.N. investigation ended without conclusion, requesting the secretary-general "inform the General Assembly of any new evidence which may come to his attention."% F# k! j2 K4 Z, ]
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Five decades later, Mr. Ban has done just that.' N7 a/ \( @% K$ m! Z% q& p/ s
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His request and the General Assembly's agreement to put it on the agenda means there will be a discussion at a date that hasn't been set yet. After that, a resolution to reopen the probe could be drafted followed by a vote.* @1 P( ] r5 Q) w4 s# L& M
5 V( J# @( m( A0 b$ o: }The Hammarskjöld commission report based many of its findings on a 2011 book "Who Killed Hammarskjöld?" by British researcher Susan Williams.
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"The possibility…the plane was…forced into its descent by some form of hostile action is supported by sufficient evidence to merit further inquiry," the report said.
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The commission reported evidence that first came to light in the book from Charles Southall, a former U.S. Navy commander who was working at an NSA listening post in Cyprus on the night of the crash. Both the commission and Ms. Williams spoke to Mr. Southall.
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Mr. Southall told The Wall Street Journal he was called to work the night of the crash by a supervisor who delivered a cryptic message, telling him to expect an important event. Their conversation took place about three hours before the crash. Later, Mr. Southall said he heard an intercept of a pilot carrying out an attack on Mr. Hammarskjöld's plane. He said the transmission had been intercepted seven minutes before he heard it.+ l; L# y1 D2 F. s0 e0 q: n
7 p [% N h7 y! @5 x/ J' K1 t" 'I see a transport coming in low. I'm going to make a run on it,' " Mr. Southall quoted the pilot as saying on the intercept. "And then you can hear the gun cannon firing and he says: 'There's flames coming out of it. I've hit it.' And soon after that it's crashed."
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$ R2 t. q. k# ], d+ U" [Although the Hammarskjöld commission asked the NSA for an audio recording or a transcript of what Mr. Southall says he heard, Mr. Southall told The Wall Street Journal the intercept was actually made by the Central Intelligence Agency. The CIA couldn't be reached for comment.; _! }1 m, _: G6 \# Z" Z
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"Authenticated recordings of any such cockpit narrative or radio messages, if located, would furnish potentially conclusive evidence of what happened" to Mr. Hammarskjöld's plane," the commission's report said.
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In response to the commission's Freedom of Information Act request, the State Department released a declassified cable found in NSA archives sent by then-U.S. ambassador to the Congo, Edmund Gullion, two days after the crash.
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"There is possibility [Mr. Hammarskjöld] was shot down by the single pilot who has harassed U.N. operations." He identified the pilot as Belgian mercenary Jan Van Risseghem, who died in 2007.
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# W1 j; _, T; P3 b7 X4 ]% iThe commission's report set out the geopolitical context in which powerful interests saw Mr. Hammarskjöld's defense of African nationalism as a threat. The Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland and South Africa supported Katangan independence to keep the province as a buffer against the southward wave of African nationalism, the report said.& J' y6 J6 _6 c7 O6 G* Y' ]
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The Belgian mining company, Union Minière du Haut Katanga, supported independence to prevent Congolese nationalization of Katanga's rich uranium and cobalt resources, the commission said. At the time Katanga supplied 80% of the West's cobalt, which is widely used in batteries, jet engines and in the medical industry.
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( M8 ?/ |5 n9 n$ H3 qThe province's uranium was used in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombs, and keeping the uranium from a pro-Soviet Congo was also a CIA priority, the commission said.( c$ n4 z4 o% C' \$ A5 Z Y$ P
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Union Minière funded the Katanga separatist government that hired hundreds of mercenaries to fight U.N. troops in Katanga, the commission said.
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The possibility that the plane was shot down had been raised shortly after the crash. However, this was the first revelation that the U.S. ambassador at the time raised this explanation, and the first time a Belgian mercenary was identified.
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Witness accounts by residents in the vicinity of the crash site, ignored in the U.N. and a Rhodesian government probe, which blamed pilot error, seem to corroborate an aerial attack, the report says.
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, F( q% O" V+ A4 bSeveral witnesses, some interviewed by the commission, reported seeing another jet firing at Mr. Hammarskjöld's plane. The white minority Rhodesian government commission dismissed the reports as unreliable. e( B! C+ B. @8 A# c- e
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An American U.N. security chief, Harold Julien, who survived the crash for six days, told doctors of an explosion aboard the U.N. plane. But this too was dismissed by the Rhodesian investigation.
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Both the book and the commission raised questions about whether those accounts should have been dismissed.7 u/ V5 W5 [0 F9 x' r
+ |8 @; C" B7 t# c6 q ]6 U: MIf the U.N. reopens its investigation, it could deal with unexplained details raised by the commission's report, such as possible bullet holes in the plane's fuselage and bullets found in the bodies of several of the crash victims.
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! U8 u! P) ?6 pThe commission questioned why a Norwegian U.N. aircrew sent to search for the plane was arrested at Ndola and why it took 15 hours to find the plane even though several witnesses spotted the wreckage at dawn and saw mercenaries and Rhodesian army and police at the site. |
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