A former Italian head of government accused France and the United States on Saturday of being responsible for the Ustica air disaster which killed 81 people on June 27, 1980 and of having done everything since to prevent the light from being shed. . More than forty years after the events, the families of the victims are still demanding truth and justice in this case anchored in the collective memory of Italians and considered one of the biggest air disasters in the history of the country.
On the evening of June 27, 1980, an Itavia DC-9 with 81 people on board operating the Bologna-Palermo link crashed in the Tyrrhenian Sea, near the island of Ustica (north of Sicily), causing the death of passengers and crew. The thesis put forward by several Italian experts is that the tragedy occurred when one or two Libyan planes pursued by American and French fighters followed the route of the civilian plane to escape their radars. Caught in this “war scenario”, the DC 9 would have been shot down by mistake, or would have collided with one of the MiGs present in the area.
“Skinning Gaddafi”
In an interview published Saturday by the daily La Repubblica, former Prime Minister Giuliano Amato (1992-1993) takes up this thesis, affirming that France, with the help of Washington, had sought to remove the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi thinking that he was in one of the Mig. “The most credible version is that of the responsibility of the French Air Force, with the complicity of the Americans”, “with the intention of” killing Gaddafi, “he said. discovery, on July 18, 1980, of the carcass of a Libyan MiG-23 in the mountains of Calabria (southern Italy) also fueled this hypothesis.
According to Mr. Amato, the national secretary of the Italian Socialist Party at the time, Bettino Craxi, reputedly close to Colonel Gaddafi, would have “wind” of a danger for him if he entered Italian airspace and would have warned. On Twitter, the son of Bettino Craxi confirmed on Saturday that his father had indeed warned Mr. Gaddafi. “But in 1986”, six years after the disaster, when he was Prime Minister, he said. In 2003, Colonel Gaddafi accused the Americans of having sought to kill him. Paris and Washington have always denied any involvement of their aircraft in this tragedy. “The Americans were convinced that I was on board this plane (the MiG-23). That’s why they shot it down,” he said.
“Wash the Shame”
Giuliano Amato is now asking French President Emmanuel Macron to “wash away the shame that hangs over France” either “by demonstrating that this thesis is unfounded, or, if confirmed, by presenting the most sincere apologies to Italy and the families of the victims”. This case has given rise to endless suppositions and hypotheses, but the responsibilities and the circumstances of the disaster have not been established. And Paris and Washington have always denied any involvement of their devices in the drama.
A criminal trial against several senior Italian military officials, suspected of having concealed information in this case, ended definitively in 2007 with their acquittal before the Court of Cassation. Then Roman magistrates reopened the Ustica investigation in 2008 following statements by former leader Francesco Cossiga, 81, who said that a French missile had shot down the Italian DC-9. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni called on Mr. Amato to provide concrete elements to his accusations.
“I ask President Amato, in addition to his deductions, to let us know if he is in possession of elements that would allow us to reverse the conclusions of justice and Parliament, and to make them available to the government” , did she say.