Amato’s mess on Ustica
What Giuliano Amato said and what he hinted at on Ustica. Federico Guiglia's notebook
To shake, still with anger and pain, the collective memory of our country, one word is enough: Ustica.
It was 27 June 1980, when an Itavia DC9 disappeared from the control radars at 20.59. The plane, which left Bologna with 81 passengers, including 11 children, was bound for Palermo. Only at dawn the following day is the terrifying truth discovered, with the aircraft crashed in the Tyrrhenian Sea between the islands of Ponza and Ustica and the first bodies sighted.
Since then, and it's been 43 years, the record has become history under the banner of another sea, that of the most disparate versions. Of that flight that never landed, everything was said, from the structural failure of the airplane to the missile that shot it down, to the bomb that blew it up.
Depending on the proposed scenario, the questions about why a quiet civilian plane had met such a dramatic end changed.
AMATO'S “CERTIFIED” HYPOTHESIS ON USTICA
But now Giuliano Amato , a former Prime Minister and Minister of the Treasury, several times a parliamentarian and already at the helm of the Constitutional Court – therefore a character who knows the Palace well – endorses the not new hypothesis, but now from him, a high institution , "certified", that it was a French missile that hit that plane as part of a plan to kill the Libyan leader Gaddafi. Which was supposed to be in flight at the same time, but was warned by the then head of the PSI, Bettino Craxi.
Amato urges French President Macron to finally reveal the state secret and apologize: “Now the Elysée can wash away the shame that weighs on Paris. Who knows, now speak. Even NATO can do it”.
THE CONTROVERSY
But the French authorities are not commenting, even though they are "ready to collaborate with Rome", while a storm of controversy is unleashed.
Craxi's son, Bobo, underlines that Amato got the timing wrong, and therefore the facts, 6 years after the massacre: his father warned Gaddafi, yes, but in 1986, i.e. when he was prime minister.
General Leonardo Tricarico, former Chief of Staff of the Air Force, accuses Amato of "falsehoods" disavowed in court.
The general recalls that for justice "that aircraft was the victim of a terrorist attack with a bomb on board, the French runway has been dismantled". For the government, Giorgia Meloni says that "personal deductions are not enough, if Amato has new elements, make them available". And Antonio Tajani says that the former prime minister "speaks like a private citizen".
Meanwhile, the families of the 81 innocents continue to claim, 43 years later, nothing but the truth.
(Published on L'Arena di Verona and Bresciaoggi)
www.federicoguiglia.com
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/pasticciaccio-giuliano-amato-ustica/ on Tue, 05 Sep 2023 05:26:29 +0000.