Cover Story Black History Month
Right: Former UN officials Conor Cruise O'Brien (l) and Major General Egge (r), whose findings, at different times, have raised questions over the official line on the plane crash. Far right: Sir Roy Welensky, former prime minister of the Central African Republic, whose archive has yielded crucial material for examining what happened
vists at Rhodes House decided to give me access because such a long period of time had elapsed and also because the matter of my inquiry was a serious one. Tese files contain documentation collected in the course of
the very first investigation into the crash: a medical report on the victims, including a précis of the autopsies; x-rays of the bodies of the dead; photographs of the bodies of the dead; plans of the crash site; and the firearms report. It is clear from the photographs, which are in black and white,
that many of the crash victims are so charred as to be unrecognis- able; Hammarskjöld’s body, on the other hand, has no burns at all. Tere are six photographs of the secretary general: three at the
scene of the crash; three in the mortuary. In the first three, he has been moved from his place of death and is lying on a stretcher, surrounded by scrub vegetation. He is wearing a white shirt with elegant cuff-links; his drill trousers are pale, with a slim black belt. His left hand appears to be holding some leaves and twigs and
his right wrist is encircled by a metal identity bracelet. Apart from some bloody marks on his face and the fact that his tie is pulled loose to the side of his neck, he looks almost immaculate and ex- tremely dignified. Tere is an object – which looks like a playing card – protruding
from the ruffled tie (or possibly cravat) around Hammarskjöld’s neck. It must have been this card that led to rumours at the time that the Ace of Spades – the “death card” – had been left on his body. It is not possible to identify the card as the Ace of Spades on
the basis of the photograph, but a civilian photographer at the scene claimed years later to have seen it. “Yes, DH did have the Ace of Spades in his shirt collar – no comment,” he recalled. “It was requested at that time not to mention this.” It is unlikely that a journalist placed the card in Hammarskjöld’s
neck, since police officers “ensured that the press touched nothing in the wreck”. In the three photographs at the mortuary, Hammarskjöld is laid
out on a slab, undressed. Te medical report was produced by the Rhodesian pathologists, H. D. Ross and J. Hillsdon Smith, and by Squadron Leader P. J. Stevens, a British aviation pathologist at RAF Halston who was sent out from Britain. It constitutes a “Summary and Conclusions, with Discussion”,
rather than the formal reports of the autopsies that were concluded: in effect, therefore, it is a précis of the collected data. Te full au- topsies themselves are not available in the Welensky archive or in any other archive that I have investigated. Tis summary report was given to the Medical Board of Sweden,
which appointed two Swedish pathologists, Dr A. Frykholm and Dr N. Ringertz, to examine the findings. All this documentation is of crucial importance for any exami-
nation of the circumstances surrounding Hammarskjöld’s death. However, I was aware that I did not have the skills necessary to examine and analyse this material. For help, I turned to three ex- perts, all on the UK Register of Expert Witnesses.
60 | October 2011 | New African
the round hole I saw in his forehead was removed. The autopsy report was also removed from the case papers. Why?” – Maj-Gen. Egge
Expert No. 1 My first expert is a consultant pathologist: Dr Robert Ian Vanhegan, FRC-Path, who has contributed to definitive textbooks and journals in his field and been a lecturer at the University of Oxford; he has 20 years’ experience of performing autopsies, including military and gunshot injuries. For the purpose of the Hammarskjöld investigation, Dr
Vanhegan examined the summary medical report. He noted, how- ever, that this report “gives only a précis of each autopsy and does not include a copy of a full report”; it was possible, therefore, that important negative findings were not included. He also examined the photographs of the body of Hammarskjöld. On the basis of the medical summary, he produced a report
identifying the primary cause of death: multiple small areas of arterial bleeding within the secretary general’s brain and a collec- tion of blood over the right cerebral hemisphere. It concludes that the secretary general died at the time of (or
very soon after) impact, with the cessation of his blood circulation, as shown by the fact that there was minimal blood in the vicinity of his spinal and leg fractures. Substantial collections of blood would have built up had he
lived. Te extent of his cerebral injuries alone, as recorded in the medical report, suggests that if he had been alive for a short period of time after the crash, he would have been unconscious. Having studied the photographs closely, Dr Vanhegan dis-
counted the belief that Hammarskjöld was holding leaves: “What appears to be vegetation in association with the left hand clearly is beneath the outer surface of the fingers (ie, not held in the palm).” Tis disqualifies the theory that the secretary general crawled out of the aeroplane with the help of leaves and twigs.
“On photos taken of Dag’s body,
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