What Happens in Cold Case Hammarskjöld?
The complete story of Cold Case Hammarskjöld, from the first scene to the last, in 378 words (about 2 minutes). Spoilers throughout.
Spoilers ahead
Mads Brügger teams up with Göran Björkdahl, who received from his father a metal plate believed to be a part from the Albertina, Hammarskjöld’s Douglas DC-6B aircraft. They develop and investigate the theory that a Fouga CM.170 Magister opened fire on the Albertina near Ndola and brought it down, possibly after an attempt to detonate a bomb after take-off had failed in Lubumbashi. Their revelations trigger a new investigation into Hammarskjöld’s death; as a part of this new investigation Björkdahl’s metal plate is examined and determined to not be authentic. Near Ndola Airport, Brügger and Björkdahl locate what they believe to be the burial site of the wreckage of the Albertina, and they make a comical attempt at excavating it, but are soon stopped by local authorities.
The film moves to South Africa, where in 1998 the Truth and Reconciliation Commission revealed a document with an outline for the assassination of Hammarskjöld. Brügger and Björkdahl want to trace the SAIMR, the organization behind this document, through its believed leader, Keith Maxwell. Maxwell is rumored to have operated a number of medical clinics in the townships of South Africa, even though he was not a medical doctor. The investigators believe SAIMR to have been a mercenary organization operating by order of MI6 and the CIA, and involved in the Hammarskjöld assassination, but they cannot prove this, despite recovering the first part of Maxwell’s fictionalized autobiography. They also cannot explain the medical clinics, apart from Maxwell’s strong interest in AIDS.
The final part of the film brings forward two new witnesses, claimed to be former SAIMR members or close relatives. These witnesses allege that SAIMR existed, and was a major clandestine mercenary organization. They claim SAIMR served the interests of white supremacy in Africa, and that it ran operations to administer the HIV virus to black people in South Africa, Mozambique, and other countries through the fake clinics, with the goal of depleting the black population to a point where whites were in the majority. Brügger and Björkdahl recover the second part of the autobiography of Maxwell, which alleges the involvement of SAIMR in the Hammarskjöld assassination. The first witness claims the playing card depicted in one of the photos of Hammarskjöld’s corpse is a covert signal of CIA involvement.
