The French embassy in Italy has informed the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs that France is now open to cooperating in the investigation into the Ustica tragedy. With a hearing scheduled for September 30, French cooperation could encourage the Rome prosecutor's office to reconsider its request to close the investigation, a move opposed by the Italian government.
Italian authorities have been waiting for a response from France since 1990, when Judge Rosario Priore repeatedly failed to receive satisfactory answers from Paris regarding key questions about the downing of the Itavia DC9 off Ustica on June 27, 1980. Since then, Italy has sought radar recordings from the crash area, the locations of the aircraft carriers Clemenceau and Foch, the flight plans of French jets heading to Libya, and the mysterious "friendly" radar trace labeled LL004, detected by the Poggio Ballone radar in Grosseto, near the French Air Force base in Solenzara, Corsica. In the 1990s, France did not comply with requests to identify the aircraft responsible for three radar traces.
Between 2010 and 2014, Prosecutor Erminio Amelio renewed efforts by requesting the logbooks of the two aircraft carriers, their routes, radar tracks, passage records, and once again the movements at Solenzara, the names of personnel on duty, and whether France participated in the Demon Jam V exercise in July 1980. Italian investigators are convinced that the Corsican base was operational beyond 5 PM, a claim consistently denied by Paris. Witnesses, including former military personnel, reported seeing a French aircraft carrier in the Tyrrhenian Sea, a claim denied by the French.
However, the French were not the only ones present that night. Judge Priore concluded that the plane crashed during an actual aerial battle involving U.S. (with the Saratoga aircraft carrier stationed in Naples) and NATO jets, as evidenced by records from Ciampino. This international operation, which went awry, aimed to shoot down a Libyan Mig flying under the cover of the DC-9, possibly the same Mig later found in Sila.
Another theory, still supported by former minister Carlo Giovanardi, suggests that a bomb was on board the plane, allegedly placed by Palestinian terrorists.
(Associated Medias) - Tutti i diritti sono riservati