On the noble floor of a Roman palace – 3 meters high ceilings – the walls are overflowing with books and files. Large doors open and a fragile figure appears, bent in an elegant suit. Twice President of the Council, former President of the Constitutional Council and former Prime Minister, Giuliano Amato is preparing to celebrate his 86th birthday. “The body is tired, but the head is spinning well,” he says, smiling. The former lawyer survived all the pitfalls of his time: Operation Mani Puliti (Clean Hands), when the political class paraded before the judges, but also the Berlusconi years and the sinking of the Socialist Party, his political family. His only failure: the truth about the Ustica affair.
Little known in France, Italy’s most famous air crash has been the subject of endless judicial and parliamentary investigations, dozens of books, a film and nineteen judgments. But not a single culprit. “This story entered my life in 1985,” recalls Giuliano Amato. As a young undersecretary of state at the Presidency of the Council, he was appointed to launch the first underwater expedition in the Tyrrhenian Sea, this piece of the Mediterranean surrounded by southern Italy, Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica. Fragments of cabin, engine parts and relics came to the surface.
Evidence helps to rule out the lame leads: a bomb placed on board or the obsolescence of the aircraft – an argument which caused the bankruptcy of the airline Itavia. The black box delivers the last words spoken by the pilot: “Guarda!” ” (Look at !). “On reading the report of the technical commission of the Ministry of Transport, specifies Giuliano Amato, the hypothesis of the missile launch is the most likely. This is the thesis that I defended before Parliament. »
Giuliano Amato, 85, received us in his office in Rome on April 3.
Paris Match / © Pascal Rostain
Politicians and journalists then agree on the fact that the DC-9 was undoubtedly the victim of an aerial combat, but the legal case is slipping. Evidence is hidden, pages of registers torn out and around fifteen suspicious deaths. During a television program, a man on the phone presenting himself as an employee of a radar center in southern Italy admits to having followed the crash live, then to having received orders to destroy the radar traces and to remain silent . ” Wait ! » interrupts the presenter. The man hangs up. The Ustica drama joins the other unsolved attacks brought together by the parliamentary commission of inquiry “stragi” (massacres).
Gaddafi targeted by NATO and France
Heard by the deputies, the former head of the Italian intelligence services (SISMI) Fulvio Martini bangs his fist on the table and accuses France or the United States of being at the origin of the shot. The investigation is relaunched. Judge Rosario Priore parades hundreds of witnesses. Its 5,900-page order is authoritative, but does not name any presumed culprits. Only a handful of high-ranking Italian officers suspected of manipulating evidence are being prosecuted. At the end of their trial, they were acquitted. We are in 2008 and the affair seems to have been definitively buried.
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Furious, the former President of the Republic Francesco Cossiga comes off his hinges and steps up to the plate. Here is his version of the facts. In 1980, the Libyan Guide Muammar Gaddafi was the enemy of the Americans and the French, but the ally of the Italians. Its planes, which cannot penetrate NATO airspace, fly over the peninsula to reach Yugoslavia. The pilots were introduced to little tricks to escape radar controls. On June 27, 1980, when Gaddafi was preparing to cross the Mediterranean, he was unaware that NATO forces and the French had deployed a robust device to liquidate him.
A bag and a sandal among the exhibits. Only forty-two bodies were found.
©DR
On the American side, the aircraft carrier “Saratoga”, an Awacs spy plane and US Air Force jets. On the French side, fighter planes ready to take off from the Solenzara base, in Corsica. According to Francesco Cossiga, the “kill Gaddafi” operation is on track, but General Giuseppe Santovito warns the Libyans. The Tupolev in Jamahiriya colors turns around. Instead, the Itavia company’s DC-9 will be shot down. Error of judgment or bad shot? The story does not say. We only know, after forty-four years of investigation, that six unidentified planes were roaming the sky at that time. One of them, smaller than the DC-9, stuck to it at a lower altitude, undoubtedly to take refuge in its radar “track”.
Unidentified fighter jet hurtles towards DC-9
We also know that two Italian F-104s suddenly took off from Grosseto, north of Rome, and issued an alert before turning back on orders from their superiors. Both pilots died eight years later in the Ramstein airshow collision, Germany, shortly before they were due to appear in court. We also know that, seconds before the Ustica crash, an unidentified fighter jet flew toward the DC-9 and made a sharp 90-degree turn. That the missile did not hit the airliner, but exploded nearby, taking away the right wing of the aircraft which fell steeply with 81 people on board.
Finally, we know that the remains of a Libyan fighter plane were found three weeks later less than 300 kilometers from Ustica, on the Sila plateau. Nothing indicates that this find has anything to do with the DC-9 crash, but it is quite unusual for a Calabrian shepherd to come across the wreckage of a Mig-23 with the pilot dead in the cockpit… So much for the clues .
Funeral vigil around the coffin of Palermo resident Antonino Greco, crash victim, July 1, 1980.
Getty Images / © Getty Images
“What is complicated today,” admits Giuliano Amato, “is that we have had two legal proceedings in Italy, and one says the opposite of the other. On the one hand, the criminal justice system exonerated the Italian officers accused of obstruction. If they were telling the truth, then on the evening of June 27, 1980, the DC-9 was alone in the sky. But the civil actions brought by the families of the victims gave rise to judgments which affirm the opposite! Namely, there were a lot of people in the sky that evening, and a missile downed the DC-9. The State failed to ensure the safety of citizens in danger, and it was for this reason that it was ordered to pay compensation to the parents of the victims. So, we Italians and families are there. We have two contradictory court decisions, confirmed by the same court in Rome. How can we live with that? »
The silences of France
Finally, there are the silences of France. When asked whether fighter planes took off from Solenzara on June 27, 1980, Paris first responded that the base closed at 5 p.m., post office style. But the testimony of Carabinieri Colonel Nicolo Bozzo contradicted this assertion. “He was on vacation in Solenzara and was unable to rest because of the noise of the fighter planes,” reports Giuliano Amato. To the point that the hotel manager came to apologize and told him it was because of the crash in Italy. But why take off planes at night? To go see a wreck? Nothing could be seen and the carcass of the DC-9 was only found the next day by the Italians. This doesn’t hold. »
Students from the Bologna School of Fine Arts maintain the wreckage of the DC-9.
©DR
La Grande Muette changed her mind. Solenzara was very active, and even in turmoil. Italian justice was able to observe this by questioning, in 2013, the officers present. “They did not provide the information we expected,” says Giuliano Amato. Then the question of the “Clemenceau” aircraft carrier arose, first announced in Toulon then on the loose in the Mediterranean Sea. “It was also said that the plane which followed the DC-9 was French, was transporting uranium to Baghdad and that it was targeted by an Israeli plane! » But, here again, France did not provide any information. Of the fifteen letters rogatory sent to Paris by Italian judges, only a handful were accepted late.
Mr. Macron has no responsibility in this matter, that is why I am calling on his help
Giuliano Amato
In 2000, Giuliano Amato broached the subject with his counterpart Jacques Chirac. “I got along well with him, but he disappointed me. He simply told me: “Issue letters rogatory!” It was like saying nothing at all. I told him: “Listen, if it’s like that, we’ll take the Farnese Palace back from you [L’ambassade de France à Rome] and you bring back the tapestries that you hung on the walls there!”[Il rit.]» After triggering a controversy in Italy by speaking for the first time publicly in the daily “La Repubblica”, last September, Giuliano Amato is now calling out President Macron.
Since these are the times for mea culpa, why not take a chance? “Mr Macron has no responsibility in this matter, which is why I am calling on his help. Only he can reveal the truth. I’m sure there are people of my generation who know what happened and are ready to talk. If you want to settle the accounts with this story, and with Italy, the time is now. And the judicial investigation is still open! »
