Ustica massacre, the Palestinian track reappears in unpublished documents revealed by La Stampa

A red alert, launched on the morning of June 27, 1980 from Lebanon to the SISMI headquarters. An encrypted telegram for decades covered by state secrets, partially declassified only in 2014, which relaunches the Palestinian track for the Ustica massacre. This was revealed by La Stampa, reporting the alarm that arrived a few hours before the plane crash linking the attack to a pro-libyan fringe of Palestinian terrorism. The telegram bears the signature of Colonel Stefano Giovannone. Only the last of a sequence of communications with which the colonel signaled the probability of “a short-term dangerous situation”, speaking of “two operations to be conducted alternatively against Italian targets: hijacking of an Alitalia DC9” or “occupation of an embassy “, as from talks with a trust source.

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Longread

The labyrinth of truth: what we know 40 years after the Ustica massacre

by GIANLUCA DI FEO (COORDINATION AND TEXT), GIOVANNI EGIDIO (BOLOGNA), ANAIS GINORI (PARIS), CONCETTO VECCHIO (ROME). LAURA PERTICI MULTIMEDIA COORDINATION. GRAPHICS AND VIDEO BY GEDI VISUAL. WITH A VIDEO INTERVIEW BY VALERIO LO MUZIO AND ANTONIO NASSO
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The history of the correspondence of Colonel Giovannone is also reconstructed in the longform “Ustica, the truth in the labyrinth” available online on our website. The information sent by the 007 chief to Beirut to report the imminence of an attack on Italy by the Popular Liberation Front of Palestine by George Habbash is described, highlighting that they would also have been transmitted on June 27, 1980. Giovannone was l officer who managed the Lodo Moro, the agreement signed in 1974 between the then Prime Minister and the Palestinians: a pact that guaranteed him freedom of movement in exchange for the immunity of our country from the attacks. In December 1979 when there was kidnapping Ortona of two surface-to-air missiles destined for the Habbash network and the arrest of an official of the PFLP in Bologna, the Palestinians asked for their release on the basis of the Lodo Moro. That was not granted. the risk of retaliation. Stressing as well as Gaddafi, sponsor of the toughest Palestinian fringes, premises for an attack on Italy. And that there was the risk that the attack would be entrusted to Carlos’ European network.

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in reproduction ….

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In the criminal trials on Ustica the thesis of the bomb was supported by several expert reports without definitive proof. The prosecutors did not believe it, also because the hypotheses on the bomb concerned different positions within the DC-9 that pushed the prosecutors to speak of “ballerina bomb”. The relatives of the victims led by Daria Bonfietti believe that evoking the bomb is following the line of sidings, attempted from the first day by SISMI agents close to the P-2.

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