Massacre of Ustica, Mattarella's appeal: "A deep wound, the allied countries open to the truth" - La Stampa

ROME. Thirst for justice. Need for truth. Need to clarify a 40-year chapter of pain. It is from June 27, 1980 that the family members of those who lost their lives on the Dc9 flight of the Itavia company, on a scheduled flight from Bologna to Palermo, asked to know who did it. Even today Daria Bonfietti, president of the association of relatives of the victims, reiterates this: «It is not possible that after 40 years nobody will tell us the truth yet. Ustica is not an Italian mystery, you know exactly what happened and a judge put it in writing: the plane was hit by a missile ». Of the 77 passengers and 4 crew members, no one was saved. At 20:59 40 years ago, the DC-9 IH870 disappears from radar. The plane is located halfway between Ponza and Ustica. From that moment on only a long, very long tunnel of mystery, omissions, silences and pain.

In the 40th anniversary, the message of the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, is not only addressed to the relatives of the victims («We feel even stronger the bond of solidarity with the families of the eighty-one victims and we join in the memory of those who then lost their life, with a deep wound in our national community “), but it is an appeal to” Allied countries with which we share common values ”:” The commitment to seek what still does not appear defined in the events of that dramatic evening. Finding decisive answers, reaching their full and unequivocal reconstruction requires the commitment of the institutions and open collaboration “.

On the investigation Mattarella underlines that “a long way was followed after reticence and opacity had been placed between the need for truth, incompressible for a democracy and a rule of law”. “The Republic and the tenacity and professionalism of men of the state – continues the head of state – have made it possible to clear mists; and this was possible thanks to the determination and civil passion of the families of the victims and of those who supported them in institutions and in society “. A commitment that “must not cease”, to the full truth.

Forty years after the Ustica massacre: “Important to tell the truth to young people”

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The president of the association of relatives of the victims, Daria Bonfietti, urges: “Today what we lack and we want to know is who was to shoot down a plane in the Italian skies in peacetime This is what we ask the government: what to do everything possible to give us the last piece of truth that is missing ».

This morning at 10 am, in Bologna, the commemoration of the fortieth anniversary of the massacre is scheduled in the presence of the President of the Chamber Roberto Fico. The timetable was not chosen at random: at 10 am on June 27, 1980, the SISMI headquarters received a red alert from Lebanon. An encrypted telegram which for decades has been covered by state secrecy, partially declassified in 2014 and which is still considered “top secret”.

From Ustica to Tehran, when the scheduled flight is shot down

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Meanwhile, the political controversy between those who are convinced that it was a terrorist attack and those who are certain of the reconstruction according to which the plane would have ended up in a real war theater in the skies of the Mediterranean shot down during a fighting between some NATO aircraft and a Libyan Mig on board of which, according to the statements released at the time by the former President of the Republic Francesco Cossiga, even Gaddafi himself was found. In the background, a web of intertwining between misdirections, espionage and counter-information.
“Tell us the truth once and for all” the uninterrupted warning of Daria Bonfietti.