… The passenger plane DS-9, which took off from Bologna to Palermo with a two-hour delay, disappeared from the radar screens at 20 hours 59 minutes. There were 81 people on board the airliner of the private company Itavia, including 13 children. The plane crashed into the Tyrrhenian Sea in an area where the depth exceeds three kilometers. There were no survivors.
Experts who were investigating this tragedy initially expressed two versions: the plane collapsed in the air for technical reasons, or an explosive device was triggered in it, which was inconspicuously carried into the cabin. In those years, homegrown terrorists from the "Red Brigades" and their neo-fascist opponents were active in Italy. However, over time, the original version began to be questioned.
And there were reasons for that.
From the very beginning, the conclusions of the experts were questioned by the owner of the airline, Aldo Davantsali (died in 2005). The independent experts hired by him, having studied the remains of the plane, the bodies of passengers and the radar records, concluded that the plane was shot down by a missile from one of the NATO countries. This version was taken seriously in Germany and the USA, but it was immediately rejected by the then Italian government. Moreover, the authorities revoked the airline's license, effectively bankrupting it. Now the fight to find out the truth and restore the good name of the father is being led by his two daughters, who are supported by many Italians through social networks on the Internet.
A few days after the tragedy over Ustica, the British newspaper Evening Standard published sensational news, which claimed that the airliner was shot down by a missile fired from one of two French aircraft carriers conducting training exercises at aerial targets in the ill-fated Tyrrhenian Sea region. The delay in the flight for two hours, according to the newspaper, could well have led to a fatal mistake …
Three weeks after the plane crashed in the mountains of Calabria, southern Italy, a crashed Soviet MiG fighter and the body of a Libyan pilot were accidentally discovered. To many, this seemed like a mysterious coincidence - both in time and in the place of the disaster. However, a joint Italian-Libyan commission of inquiry was quick to declare that the pilot died on the day the find was made, and the reason was his gross error. And only a few years later, the Sicilian forensic investigator Rosario Priore will receive the conclusion of a forensic expert who examined the body of the deceased Libyan. The document clearly stated that the pilot died on June 27, 1980. And on November 30 of the same year, a group of American experts circulated their own investigation, which concluded that the DS-9 was shot down by a missile. But the Italian government did not react in any way either to the publication in an English newspaper or to the opinion of American specialists.
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The dossier on this case was shelved for a long time. Only in 1986, the relatives of the victims turned to the then President of Italy, Francesco Cossiga, with a request to finally find out the truth about the tragedy. And the head of state gave a corresponding order to the government of Bettino Craxi. Two technical commissions were created, one of which soon came to the conclusion: the passenger airliner was shot down by a missile, but for complete confidence it is necessary to carry out work to restore the aircraft body. On this, the matter stalled again …
And only in 2008 F. Kossiga, then a senator for life, made an unexpected statement in one of the television interviews. Citing information from the Italian secret service SISMI, he said that the airliner was mistakenly shot down by a missile from an aircraft of the French Navy, which were hunting for the then Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi because of a heated dispute between Paris and Tripoli over part of the territory of Chad.
According to this version, the Libyan leader flew in a personal DC-9, accompanied by a MiG fighter jet to Malta, but was notified by Italian agents of the impending assassination attempt. Colonel Gaddafi's plane was on a parallel course with the passenger DS-9, evading French radars. According to the ex-president of Italy, in turn, the pilot of the French fighter, so as not to be noticed by the Libyans, flew under the Italian airliner, and from this position fired a rocket at the plane of the Libyan leader. “There was a mistake that led to a terrible tragedy,” F. Cossiga confirmed to two Italian journalists in 2010, a few months before his death. Moreover, he advised them not to continue this investigation in France, so as not to become a victim of "food poisoning or a sudden traffic accident." He clearly hinted atthat since the plane crash near the island of Ustica, 12 people have died under strange circumstances, mainly the then dispatchers and pilots who could have testified.
Until now, successive French governments have categorically denied the presence of their military aircraft that day in the ill-fated air zone. However, one of the generals serving on the island of Corsica at the time confirmed that on the evening of June 27, 1980, several French fighters left the local military base and headed for the coast of Italy. Their activity was noticed by the dispatchers of the Rome Fiumicino airport.
Relatives of the victims of the plane crash are increasingly demanding that French President François Hollande declassify the data on the tragedy 32 years ago, if they are really still stored in Paris.
In 2013, the Italian Supreme Court of Cassation considered the case of the 1980 plane crash over the island of Ustica and found that the judicial authorities were misled in the investigation into the causes of the tragedy. Prior to that, in December 2005, the Rome Court of Appeal acquitted two retired Italian Air Force generals Lamberto Bartolucci and Franco Ferri, who were accused of high treason. In particular, they were charged with an attempt to mislead the Italian government and other state bodies and to hide the true causes and circumstances of the death of DC-9.
