- CAPE TOWN, Aug 19 (Reuters) - South Africa's truth commission chairman
Archbishop Desmond Tutu Wednesday released documents which he said suggested
a Western plot was behind the death of the head of the United Nations in
1961.
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- Tutu said his Truth and Reconciliation
Commission, which is investigating crimes committed during the apartheid
era, had decided to release the documents although it could not verify
their authenticity.
-
- ``The commission has discovered...documents
discussing the sabotage of the aircraft in which the U.N. Secretary-General
Dag Hammarskjold died on the night of September 17 to 18, 1961,'' Tutu
told a news conference before
-
- leaving to spend a year in the United
States.
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- ``We have been unable to investigate
the veracity of these documents and of allegations that South Africa or
other Western intelligence agencies were involved in bringing about the
air crash,'' he said.
-
- The letters, headed the South African
Institute for Maritime Research (SAIMR) -- said to be a front company for
the South African military -- include references to the U.S. Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA) and the British MI5 security service.
-
- ``In a meeting between MI5, special ops
executive and the SAIMR, the following emerged,'' reads one document marked
Top Secret, ``it is felt that Hammarskjold should be removed.''
-
- ``I want his removal to be handled more
efficiently than was Patrice,'' the document said.
-
- The CIA last year opened its files on
Cold War assassinations and admitted it ordered the murder of Patrice Lumumba,
Congolese independence hero and pro-Soviet prime minister.
-
- Another letter headed ``Operation Celeste''
gives details of orders to plant explosives in the wheel bay of an aircraft
primed to go off as the wheels were retracted on takeoff.
-
- The CIA denied Wednesday it had been
involved in Hammarskjold's death.
-
- ``The notion that the CIA was behind
the death of the former United Nations Secretary General is absurd and
without foundation,'' a CIA spokeswoman said adding that she could not
speculate on the authenticity or history of the South African documents.
-
- Hammarskjold and 15 other people were
killed when their aircraft crashed entering what was then Northern Rhodesia,
now Zambia, where the U.N. head was due to meet rebel leader Moise Tshombe
to negotiate a truce in the Congolese civil war.
-
- The United Nations sent a peacekeeping
force to newly liberated Congo in 1960 when the new government asked for
help in the face of mutiny in its army, secession in Tshombe's Katanga
provinces and the invervention of Belgian
-
- troops.
-
- Newspapers at the time alleged British
involvement in a plot to kill Hammarskjold to prevent U.N. support for
Tshombe and his diamond-rich Katanga province.
-
- ``We have it on good authority that UNO
(the United Nations Organization) will want to get its greedy paws on the
province,'' reads a letter dated July 12, 1960.
-
- The letters came to light as truth commission
researchers were ploughing through South African security documents in
preparation for the truth commission's final report.
-
- Tutu said the truth commission mandate
to investigate such matters expired at the end of July and it therefore
decided to publish the documents with names of individuals deleted and
hand them to Justice Minister Dullah Omar.
-
- The archbishop, whose purple-robed figure
has come to symbolise the painful process of reconciliation in South Africa,
said he hoped releasing the documents would help set an example for more
transparency in government.
-
- Tutu was due to leave Cape Town later
Wednesday for a year as visiting theology professor at Emory University
in Atlanta, Georgia. He will return briefly in October to present the commission's
final report to President Nelson Mandela.
-
- The commission's mandate to investigate
gross human rights violations ended on July 31 but its independent amnesty
committee is still wading through thousands of amnesty applications which
will keep it busy well into next year.
-
- *** end Reuters report ***
-
- I had to get this from Reuters because
Associated Press & the New York Times wire DIDN'T CARRY THE STORY.
I first heard about it from a radio news report (NPR, I think).
-
- --- Lee Merkel, Worcester, Mass. ~~
You're always at the frontier of reality ~~
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