From the DC 9 probably shot down on June 27, 1980 above the Tyrrhenian Sea, thousands of fragments remained. In the darkness of a hangar in the suburbs of Bologna transformed into a museum, since 2007 they have included an installation created by the visual artist Christian Boltanski (1944-2021), in homage to the eighty-one people killed in the destruction of the device.
“This wreck is a sacred object to us. It is the place where our loved ones died, the thing their eyes saw last. It also symbolizes a civic fight for the truth,” confides Daria Bonfietti. Since 1986, this 78-year-old woman has been the tireless president of the association of families of victims of the disaster of Ustica, the small Sicilian island off the coast of which the airliner linking Bologna to Palermo crashed. . She lost her older brother there.
Linked to an undeclared act of war in the Italian sky, according to the first conclusions of the courts, but still the subject of a judicial investigation and a story strewn with gray areas, the Ustica affair haunts Italy. The subject of countless journalistic investigations, around ten books, a play and a film, it occasionally bursts into the country’s media, always giving rise to energetic comments from Daria Bonfietti. At the beginning of September, she was back in the media after Giuliano Amato, head of the Italian executive from 1992 to 1993, then from 2000 to 2001, brought the drama back to the forefront in a daily interview La Repubblica.
He defends the thesis according to which the DC 9 was destroyed by the missile fire of a French fighter plane targeting a Libyan aircraft: the latter was flying in the wake of civilian medium-haul to escape radars, above the Italian territory.
At the time of the tragedy, France and the regime of Muammar Gaddafi, then close to Italy, clashed in northern Chad, and Libyan military planes made regular incursions over the Mediterranean. In this context, the author of the shot, says Giuliano Amato, 85, was seeking to destroy a plane in which the Guide of the Revolution was supposed to be, an operation carried out with the blessing of Washington. The former politician urged French President Emmanuel Macron to speak out on the subject, to “wash away the shame that weighs on France”.
False leads, omissions and disturbing incidents
“Amato’s statements sum up the consensus who reigns over the matter » in Italy, says Daria Bonfietti, sharp gaze under her large-framed glasses. “In 1999, after nineteen years of investigation, the investigation established that it was an explosion that occurred during an aerial combat, she explains. The only element that is missing and which would allow us to finally be at peace is to determine the author of the incident. Thanks to Giuliano Amato and his political weight, the question is relaunched, it is a considerable development. »
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