Italian ex-premier says French missile downed an airliner in 1980 by accident in bid to kill Gadhafi

ROME – A former Italian premier, in an interview printed on Saturday, contended {that a} French air power missile unintentionally introduced down a passenger jet over the Mediterranean Sea in 1980 in a failed bid to assassinate Libya’s then chief Moammar Gadhafi.

Former two-time Premier Giuliano Amato appealed to French President Emmanuel Macron to both refute or verify his statement about the reason for the crash on June 27, 1980, which killed all 81 individuals aboard the Italian home flight.

In an interview with Rome day-to-day La Repubblica, Amato stated he’s satisfied that France hit the aircraft whilst focused on a Libyan army jet.

While acknowledging he has no laborious evidence, Amato additionally contended that Italy tipped off Gadhafi, and so the Libyan, who used to be heading again to Tripoli from a gathering in Yugoslavia, did not board the Libyan army jet.

What led to the crash is certainly one of trendy Italy’s maximum enduring mysteries. Some say a bomb exploded aboard the Itavia jetliner on a flight from Bologna to Sicily, whilst others say exam of the wreckage, pulled up from the seafloor years later, point out it used to be hit by a missile.

Radar strains indicated a flurry of airplane job in that a part of the skies when the aircraft went down.

“The most credible version is that of responsibility of the French air force, in complicity with the Americans and who participated in a war in the skies that evening of June 27,” Amato was quoted as saying.

NATO planned to “simulate an exercise, with many planes in action, during which a missile was supposed to be fired” with Gadhafi as the objective, Amato stated.

In the aftermath of the crash, French, U.S. and NATO officials denied any military activity in the skies that night.

According to Amato, a missile was allegedly fired by a French fighter jet that had taken off from an aircraft carrier, possibly off Corsica’s southern coast.

Macron, 45, was a toddler when the Italian passenger jet went down in the sea near the tiny Italian island of Ustica.

“I ask myself why a tender president like Macron, whilst age-wise extraneous to the Ustica tragedy, would not need to take away the disgrace that weighs on France,” Amato told La Repubblica. ”And he can remove it in only two ways — either demonstrating that the this thesis is unfounded or, once the (thesis’) foundation is verified, by offering the deepest apologies to Italy and to the families of the victims in the name of his government.”

Amato, who’s 85, stated that in 2000, when he used to be premier, he wrote to the then presidents of the United States and France, Bill Clinton and Jacques Chirac, respectively, to press them to make clear what came about. But in the long run, the ones entreaties yielded “total silence,” Amato stated.

When queried by The Associated Press, Macron’s workplace stated Saturday it would not straight away touch upon Amato’s remarks.

Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni known as on Amato to say if he has concrete components to again his assertions in order that her govt may pursue any longer investigation.

Amato’s phrases “merit attention,” Meloni said in a statement issued by her office, while noting that the former premier had specified that his assertions are “fruit of personal deductions.”

Assertions of French involvement aren’t new. In a 2008 television interview, former Italian President Francesco Cossiga, who was serving as premier when the crash occurred, blamed it on a French missile whose target had been a Libyan military jet and said he learned that Italy’s secret services military branch had tipped off Gadhafi.

Gadhafi was killed in Libya’s civil war in 2011.

A few weeks after the crash, the wreckage of a Libyan MiG, with the badly decomposed body of its pilot, was discovered in the remote mountains of southern Calabria.

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Sylvie Corbet contributed to this record from Paris.