Suspicions of a state scandal that caused a stir in the Italian press. As Courrier international decrypts, the case of the Ustica crash, which occurred on June 27, 1980, came back to the fore after the former president of the Italian council, Giuliano Amato, gave an interview to La Repubblica.
While many gray areas around this air tragedy, which claimed the lives of 81 people near the Italian island of Ustica, persist, he takes up the thesis defended by the families of the victims according to which a French plane would have was the source of a missile launch, the explosion of which would have hit the DC-9, which provided a link between Bologna and Palermo. “The most credible version of this affair is the one that points to the responsibility of French aviation, with the complicity of the Americans,” said Giuliano Amato.
“We wanted to eliminate [the Libyan leader] Muammar Gaddafi, who was supposed to be flying on a Mig from his air force. The plan was to simulate a NATO exercise, during which a missile would have been sent against the plane of the Libyan leader, making it look like an accident, “continues the former leader, without however advancing concrete evidence of his charges. For their part, France and the United States have always denied any involvement in this tragedy.
A lengthy judicial investigation led to a criminal trial against several senior Italian military officials, suspected of having withheld information in this case, which 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.
In his interview, Giuliano Amato also asks Emmanuel Macron, barely born at the time of the tragedy, to “wash away the shame that hangs over France” either by demonstrating that this thesis is unfounded or, if confirmed, by presenting the sincere apologies to Italy and to the families of the victims.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni called on her predecessor to provide concrete evidence for her allegations. “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 reconsider the conclusions of justice and Parliament, and to make them available to the government. »
