Seek Ustica Truth, Friendly Countries Cooperate-Mattarella
Rome: The search for the truth on the mysterious 1980 Ustica disaster must go on and friendly countries must cooperate in that search, President Sergio Mattarella said on the 45th anniversary Friday of the Bologna-Palermo Itavia airline flight crash over the island off Sicily that killed 81 people. “The massacre of 45 years ago in the skies of Ustica has left a painful and profound mark on the history of the Republic that can never be erased”, the head of State said.
According to Ansa News Agency, in March this year, Rome prosecutors asked a preliminary investigations judge (GIP) to shelve the latest investigation into the disaster. The la Repubblica newspaper said prosecutors believe a military aerial dogfight caused the crash, ruling out the possibility that a bomb exploded onboard. The mysterious air disaster known in Italy as the ‘Ustica Massacre’ (Strage di Ustica) on June 27, 1980, left 81 people dead and has been the subject of numerous investigations, legal actions, and accusations, including claims
of conspiracy.
According to the report, Rome’s State attorneys were unable to identify the nationality of the fighter jets that allegedly caused the crash of the Bologna-Palermo flight operated by the now-defunct Itavia airline. The air carrier from the Marche region was owned by Ancona entrepreneur Aldo Davanzali. The plane crashed into the Tyrrhenian Sea between the islands of Ponza and Ustica, killing all 81 people, including 13 children, on board.
Judicial sources said the probe was allegedly hampered by the lack of transparency and cooperation from the foreign countries involved, which provided incomplete information and at times misleading evidence to Italian authorities, per the report. Hypotheses on the causes of what has been one of Italy’s enduring mysteries have included a terrorist bombing and a missile strike during a military aerial dogfight, with a Libyan plane possibly being the intended target.
In 2013, the Court of Cassation found that a missile fired from an unknown source was the defini
te cause of the disaster, and said that “cover-ups” in investigations into Itavia Flight 870 must now be considered “definitively ascertained”. Ten years later, ex-premier Giuliano Amato said in 2023 that a French missile was behind the mysterious crash. Amato said at the time that the DC9 was hit in an attempt to assassinate late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.
Meanwhile, Daria Bonfietti, the president of the association of relatives of victims of the disaster, expressed “great pain and disappointment” after the request to shelve the latest investigation that was opened in 2008 after late Italian president Francesco Cossiga said French jets were responsible for the crash. Bonfietti stressed the pain “for our dead who have not had full justice yet and disappointment for the many years of investigations and the efforts made by magistrates and lawyers that could not uncover the full truth”.