A former Italian prime minister is creating quite a bit of a PR storm for France.
Giuliano Amato, a two-time Premier, contends that Italy mistakenly shot down a domestic Italian flight in 1980, reported CBS News.
This was an error as they were attempting to assassinate then-Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi.
Confirm or Deny
The report was published this weekend in the Rome paper, La Repubblica.
France was reportedly targeting a Libyan military jet when it accidentally hit the airliner on June 27, 1980, killing all 81 souls aboard the flight.
Amato was quoted, “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.”
He alleged that NATO was to hold a simulated exercise, “with many planes in action, during which a missile was supposed to be fired.”
After the domestic flight crashed, NATO, French, and US officials all denied that any military activity had taken place that evening.
Now Amato is calling on French President Emmanuel Macron to confirm or deny his account of what happened that night.
In the La Republica interview, Amato stated, “I ask myself why a young president like Macron, while age-wise extraneous to the Ustica tragedy, wouldn’t want to remove the shame that weighs on France.
“And he can remove it in only two ways – either demonstrating that 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.”
There has always been a shroud of doubt over what happened to the airliner.
The most publicized explanation was that a bomb of some sort had exploded onboard the plane, but there were always whispers that the plane had been hit by a missile.
