Ustica, here are the questions that Amato will not answer
Facts, considerations and questions on the sidelines of Giuliano Amato's hearing at Copasir on Ustica.
On September 2, in the last sleepy summer weekend, the former battleship Repubblica launched Giuliano Amato's missile: a French fighter would have shot down the DC-9 Itavia near Ustica and Macron would have had to apologize to Italy. From these sensational declarations, weakened to a "more plausible hypothesis" already in the subsequent conference at the Foreign Press, no particular news emerged, also due to the lack of uncomfortable questions from those present. The Rome Public Prosecutor's Office itself, which has been investigating similar statements made to Sky by the former President of the Republic Francesco Cossiga for 15 years, does not appear to have found sufficient insights to justify his summons.
When the matter seemed to be heading towards a dead end, on the afternoon of 2 October the news spread of the imminent hearing by Copasir, the Parliamentary Committee for the security of the Republic, chaired by the former Defense Minister Lorenzo Guerini (Pd ). At the moment it is impossible to know if the commissioners – half of the majority (including the vice-president Giovanni Donzelli) and half of the opposition (including the secretary Ettore Rosato, former Italia Viva and now towards Action) will be able to be more intrusive than the journalists, as happened in the nineties , in the golden period of the Massacre Commission, when the deputies grilled the soldiers deemed a priori guilty of hiding who knows what.
Of course, there would be no shortage of questions for Amato. Some were suggested by Giuliana Cavazza, who lost her mother in the massacre, and Flavia Bartolucci. Respectively honorary president and president of the Association for the Truth about the Ustica Air Disaster, Cavazza and Bartolucci told Adn Kronos that they would like to ask the former prime minister if «he is aware that the criminal sentences have excluded the battle at all levels of judgment hypothesis hypothesized by you to Repubblica, defining it "more worthy of the plot of a crime film than of a judicial ruling"? A second question to ask, the presidents continue, would be "For what reasons do you not consider the hypotheses formulated by the ex-officio expert panel to be reliable?", which in 1994 "concluded unanimously by excluding the missile and instead identifying the bomb" as the cause of the destruction of the DC-9.
Since Copasir is a political headquarters, the third curiosity appears very provocative. «You said that politics can do a lot for Ustica. What did he have in mind? Have political interventions already taken place in the Ustica case and if so, which ones? As former president of the Constitutional Court, does this seem to you to be in line with the separation of state powers? It is hardly necessary to remember that in 1989 some statements by Amato himself had induced the investigating judge Bucarelli to abandon the investigation and sue him for defamation. The complaint had no particular consequences for Amato – the Perugia Prosecutor's Office dismissed it, declaring that these were declarations made in the exercise of the parliamentary mandate and therefore unquestionable -, but it allowed the investigations to be entrusted to Rosario Priore, who decidedly oriented them towards the missile .
The last set of questions entrusted to the agency asks Amato to give an account to Copasir of the difference between what he had testified under oath in 2001 in the Assize Court and the free declarations made to Repubblica. «As prime minister – continue the two presidents – you wrote an official letter to Chirac asking for his collaboration. Did he ever get a response? If so, do you remember which one it was? If so, did you find it satisfactory? If not, what actions did he follow?".
These are not the only possible questions. With little effort, one could arrive at at least ten, for example by digging into the difference between the statements attributed to Admiral Fulvio Martini, long-time head of the SISMI, and those he actually made during the hearing or in the book Codename Ulisse or obtainable from the declassified papers. Or asking about the meaning and depth of the bond with Andrea Purgatori and Daria Bonfietti that Amato claimed to the Foreign Press. Sharp questions, such as those that a free press should ask in its search for the truth, without lazily settling on the political, novel or cinematographic versions. But above all without abdicating one's role in politics. Sorry, at Copasir.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/ustica-ecco-le-domande-alle-quali-amato-non-rispondera/ on Tue, 03 Oct 2023 03:31:50 +0000.