In 1960 the Congo was in turmoil, facing instability, civil war and secession after its newly won independence.  It asked, not for the last time, for the help of the United Nations and UN troops were sent.

A year later, a Swedish aircraft on a peace mission carrying 16 people, one of them the UN Secretary General, Dag Hammarskjöld, circled over the rain forest of Central Africa.  As it came into land it crashed, killing all on board.

There has never been a satisfactory explanation of that plane crash, despite three inquiries. Unsurprisingly, conspiracy theories and speculation are legion.

Now, more than 50 years later, a Commission of distinguished jurists, has re-opened the case and they have come up with some startling new leads.

The Hammarskjöld Commission is a voluntary body of four international jurists who were invited by an international Enabling Committee to report whether in their view the evidence now available would justify the United Nations in reopening its inquiry pursuant to General Assembly resolution 1759 (XVII) of 26 October 1962.

The Panel of jurists, who make up the Commission are:

The Rt Hon Sir Stephen Sedley (Chair)

Swedish Ambassador Hans Corell

South African Justice Richard Goldstone

Justice Wilhelmina Thomassen (European Court of Human Rights)

You can download a copy of the Commission Report here.

Tess Woodcraft went along to Stephen Sedley's chambers in central London to discuss the Commission's findings. She began by asking him to describe the background to the events of that fateful night in 1961

SS:  Dag Hammarskjöld was the second Secretary General of the UN, a Swede, very highly regarded, who was on a mission at the time of his death, to try to stop the break away of the province of Katanga from the newly independent Congo from escalating into a full scale civil war.  he was flying on the night of 17th September 1961, a Sunday, from Leopoldville in the Congo to Ndola in what was then Northern Rhodesia (and is now Zambia)to meet with the president of the breakaway state of Katanga, Moise Tshombe, to try to negotiate a ceasefire between his forces, which included a large number of European mercenaries, and the UN forces that were trying to pacify Congo.

The geo-political situation was complicated - it always is - but essentially it was a world we'd no longer recognise.  The US and the Soviet Union both supported the efforts of the UN to support de-colonisation, in particularl in Africa, and it was the colonial powers (Britain, France, Belgium, Portugal) who were opposing this in one form or another.

Britain, however, had a very interesting and ambivalent role.  On one hand, it was the parent country of Northern Rhodesia, which was then the Federation of Rhodesia. But it was also a loyal member of the UN, and regarded itself as bound to try to support the efforts of the UN to bring peace to the Congo and reunite it as a political entity - not withstanding that the government of N. Rhodesia were bitterly opposed to everything the UN was doing.  That ambivalence shows up in places in our report.

Tess Woodcraft: The UN was very new at that point, Dag Hammarskjöld was only the second Secretary General.  Do you think there is any significance in that?

SS: Yes.  Secretary General was a relatively new role, which Dag Hammarskjöld had done an astonishing amount to forge into a world diplomatic job, and had succeeded in securing the respect of most of the world political community.  There was nothing in his terms of employment that said he had to fly to combat zones to sort things out - he did it because it seemed to him the best way to carry out his mandate.

TW: That's interesting given the UN's continuing role in in Congo even now.