Memorial plaque Ustica Massacre - Marsala

On the evening of June 27, 1980, a DC-9 from Itavia took off from Bologna almost two hours late (hence one cannot accept the theory of a bomb with a time detonator), bound for Palermo. A few minutes before 9 p.m. local time, it reported to the Roma Ciampino tower that it was going to contact air traffic control in Palermo for the descent and then disappeared from the screens of all radars in the area.

The last sentence on the cockpit voice recorder , as recently confirmed by Rainews24, was the following: "Guarda...cos'è" ("Look...what is") -and then silence. This was said by the co-pilot, Fontana, who was sitting on the right side of the cockpit.

Ciampino's radar track, reproduced on paper, shows a clear attack maneuver by a military fighter plane that came from the west and crossed the DC-9's course at a 90-degree angle.

The plane crashed into the sea near the volcanic island of Ustica in the Tyrrhenian Sea, killing all 77 passengers and four crew members. In the Italian media, the plane crash was also called the Ustica Massacre (Strage di Ustica).

Various investigations have been initiated following the plane crash. The investigation was sabotaged for a long time, resulting in no clarity regarding the cause. The investigation into what happened was suspended until 1986.

It was not until January 23, 2013 that the Italian court ruled that there was clear evidence that the plane had been shot down by a missile. The exact truth about that night is still unknown.

The historical political period in which this case took place was particularly problematic and tense . It was the last decade of the Cold War and NATO had recently decided to install medium-range missiles on European territory in the hope that the USSR would withdraw the European-targeted SS-20s. Euromissiles were to be placed in Comiso, a small town in Sicily .

Just in those years , Italy strengthened its economic and trade ties with Gaddafi's Libya and Saddam Hussein's Iraq, which led to dissatisfaction among the alliance and especially the US.

There may have been a collaboration between several secret services to cover up the evidence of the case, as we still don't know the truth about what happened. On May 8, 2010, Head of State Giorgio Napolitano confirmed that what happened in Ustica was the result of international intrigue, together with the lack of transparency on the part of state bodies.

Key Italian media sources claimed that the plane was shot down during a dogfight between Libyan, American, French and Italian air force fighters in an assassination attempt by NATO members on Gaddafi, who was flying in the same airspace that day. This version was supported in 1999 by investigating judge Rosario Priore, who said in his final report that his investigation had been deliberately obstructed by the Italian military and members of the secret service, in accordance with NATO requests.

The crash of the civilian plane could have been the result of the collision with one of the military aircraft, the nationality of which, however, will never be determined. The destruction of evidence shows that there was a specific project to prevent any substantiated and reasonable reconstruction of the event.

Willem Vandenameele