Crashed in Congo, but there was no shortage of suspects

was deposed by rivals, tortured and executed. Decades later, a British spy, Daphne Park, would brag about having helped arrange it.

At the time, though, critics blamed Hammarskjöld for letting things devolve. While defending the UN’s efforts, the secretary-general admitted the country had spun out of control. “Events in the Congo move quickly,” he said, “and it seems so far, always badly.”

Then it all got worse. Although the UN forces were there to keep the peace, they were soon fighting a real war in Katanga. On April 17, 1961, Hammarskjöld was en route to the region, hoping to negotiate a ceasefire with rebel leader Moise Tshombe.

He never arrived. Hammarskjöld’s plane was 10 hours overdue before search parties were finally dispatched. It was another five hours before they found the crash site. The plane had gone down in the nearby jungle and shattered on impact. Much of it was still burning.

Hammarskjöld had been thrown clear.

His back was to an anthill, and his body was nearly unmarked. A clear message was left on the corpse: A playing card, the ace of spades, lay on his chest.

Of the 16 onboard, there was only one, horribly burned survivor, the mission’s head of security.

“It blew up,” he gasped. “Then there was the crash.

There was a lot of explosions all around.”

Taken to the hospital, he slipped in and out of consciousness until he died six days later.

Because the plane had gone down in Rhodesia, its apartheid government led the investigation.

Disregarding black witnesses who recalled seeing a mysterious “flash” in the sky, the Rhodesians concluded the pilot had flown too low and crashed into the trees.

Then why were the bodies of several passengers bulletridden? Guns had gone off accidentally during the fire, experts claimed. Why was the ace of spades, the so-called death card, on Hammarskjöld’s corpse? No one seemed to care.

It has been almost 60 years since the crash, and there are still more theories than answers.

Was it an armed stowaway? A bomb? Did the plane crash, trying to evade pursuers? The aircraft was shot down by an assassin.

There are even more suspects than theories.

“Russia hated Hammarskjöld as an agent of the West,” Somaiya writes. “The West hated him for opening the door to Russia in the Congo. The Congolese hated him for Lumumba’s death. The white Africans and Belgians who had actually killed Lumumba hated him because he had attempted to stop their secession.”

Eerily, it was a death Hammarskjöld himself had predicted.

“We countered effectively efforts from all sides to make the Congo a happy hunting ground for national interests,” Hammarskjöld said, defending the UN’s work. “To be a roadblock to such efforts is to make yourself the target.”

Like many who try to save lives, Hammarskjöld paid with this own.

It was a violent end to a peaceful man, the first in that dreadful decade.

More than half a century later, the country he tried to help, now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is as poor and violent as ever.