THIS INCREDIBLE REAL LIFE DETECTIVE STORY is still officially a mystery: so let's solve it today. Who blew up a planeload of Hong Kong passengers on their ways to a conference at which the Chinese premier was due to speak?

In this report, on the 71st anniversary of that mass murder in April 1955, you and I are going to find the answer.

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THE TIME BOMB

At 1.26 pm on the 11th of April 1955, a plane bearing the name “Kashmir Princess” left Hong Kong’s Kai Tak airport. Many of the passengers were journalists on a working trip to cover a meeting of Asian leaders, including Chinese premier Zhao Enlai and Indonesia’s Sukarno.

But five hours later, air traffic controllers lost contact with the plane, and it failed to arrive at its destination, Bandung, Indonesia.

Investigators found that the plane had been carrying a time bomb – which exploded, sending the aircraft into the sea.

One of only three survivors, Anant Karnik, told a horrific story of explosions, and the plane crashing, leaving him in the ocean surrounded by burning wreckage, flames 20 meters high.

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‘CAREFULLY PLANNED MASS MURDER’

Chinese civil servants said the mass killing was a joint operation by the United States and Taiwan. “This unfortunate incident was certainly not a usual aircraft accident, but a murder by the special service organizations of the United States and Chiang Kai-shek,” the Chinese Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

The Americans dismissed the claim. No proof, they said.

Investigations by British Hong Kong police and Indian detectives showed that a time bomb had been placed in the wheelbase of the aircraft at Kai Tak airport in what they described as “carefully planned mass murder”.

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THE AIRCRAFT CLEANER
A month later, on the 18th of May, Hong Kong police zeroed in on their chief suspect: a 34-year-old aircraft cleaner named Chow Tse-ming, known to have consorted with a Taiwanese spy in the city.

But as they arrived arrest him, he vanished—and flew out of the city on a flight to Taiwan by an airline called Civil Air Transport.

He could not be extradited, so British Hong Kong police were forced to close the case.

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‘NOTHING TO SEE HERE’

Several years later, a Senate committee heard that CIA bosses had suggested that an East Asian leader be assassinated “to disrupt an impending Communist Conference in 1955”.

This was clearly the Bandung Conference, misrepresented. An assassination plan had been created but then dropped, CIA representatives said.

So the Senate team moved on to discuss other issues. Nothing to see there.

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DETAILS AT LAST

But in 1977, retired CIA agent William Corson, who had worked in Hong Kong, revealed that the rumours of an assassination attempt were true and the target was China’s Zhao Enlai.

A quarter of a century later, in 2004, the Chinese government’s 30-year declassification system triggered the release of a new batch of files. They confirmed that Premier Zhou Enlai had been booked to fly on that specific Air India plane, the Kashmir Princess, from Hong Kong, on that date.

But Chinese agents had detected that the US had plans to assassinate him. He changed his plans, instead flying to Rangoon to meet the leaders of India and Burma, before travelling onwards to Bandung from a different direction.

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SOLVING THE MYSTERY
Let’s look back at the clues. As the plane’s pilots dined at Hong Kong airport on that day in 1955, a mysterious man approached them with questions about the flight. Suspicious, they sent him away.

After recovering the wreckage, investigators noted that the bomb and the timing device were “Made in the USA”.

Hong Kong police found out how much the airport cleaner had been paid – a huge sum, far more than a Taiwan spy could have afforded.

In 1967, a retired CIA agent wrote a book of memoirs, recalling a mission to deliver explosives—for use on a Hong Kong flight in 1955.

Most damning of all, investigators eventually learned that the entire airline on which the bomber had escaped, Civil Air Transport, was fake—it had been set up by the CIA to move staff around East Asia.

Put these and other clues together, and our cold case is solved. It's genuinely shocking to discover the range of brutal crimes that certain people get away with, just because they have a red white and blue flag

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https://x.com/NuryVittachi/status/2001489314354753984

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10 TRENDS AT THIS WEEK'S BRICS
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