Ustica massacre, 44 years later

These are perhaps the least seen images of the Ustica massacre those that will be shown on the night between 27 and 28 June in Bologna. They are those of the sunken wreck, motionless in the darkness of the seabed. The city will remember the 44th anniversary of the Ustica massacre with Overnight sea voyagethe video installation by Jacopo Rinaldi which will be broadcast on screens in various parts of the city, an attempt, according to the author, to «reactivate a submerged collective memory».

The event is part of the 15th edition of Around the Museumthe event organized by the Association of Relatives of the Victims of the Ustica Massacre at the Zucca Park, where the Museum for the Memory of Ustica: from 27 June to 10 August art, theatre, music, poetry and dance will once again deal with the massacre, which over the course of these 44 years has continued to prompt the need for artistic and cultural reflection and re-elaboration, perhaps more than any other event in the history of our country. Among the guests who enthusiastically accepted to participate in the event with original productions Concita De Gregorio, Erica Mou, Stefano Massini, Virgilio Sieni, David Riondino.

Night Voyage by Sea is built on images of the wreck of the DC-9 Itavia on the seabed shot as part of the Opera mission which in 1987 began the recovery of the remains of the aircraft.

In the first years after the Ustica massacre the hypothesis of «structural failure» of the DC-9 seemed to be the most accredited and the request for recovery of the wreckage, advanced by the relatives of the victims, was considered superfluous. Starting from 27 April 1987 the French institute Ifremer started the Opera mission, acronym for Operation Aircraft Recovery in order to find, identify and recover the fragments of the wreckage of the Itavia DC-9, pursuing the objective of getting to the bottom of the search for the reasons for the disaster.

The wreck was located and this allowed the Judge Prior Rosary to write in his sentence-order of ’99 of the causes of the event: the DC-9 was shot down during an air war operation. The fragments of the aircraft were recovered at 3620 meters deep, in one of the most depressed points of the Mediterranean: the means and instruments used by Ifremer for this operation were the same ones used only two years earlier, in 1985, for the localization and discovery of the Titanic in the North Atlantic.

L’Association of Victims’ Relatives is engaged on the one hand in the constant request to Judiciary to conclude the investigations, reopened in 2008 after President Cossiga had attributed responsibility for the tragedy to France, and to indicate the culprits, on the other to keep the memory alive by drawing on the most varied expressions of contemporary artistic languages. For years Daria Bonfietti he repeats it remembering that night. «The government of my country, Italy, must ask other countries what they were doing in our skies that night. It is clear to everyone: what is not known is why it was unspeakable for these countries. We know the truth about the massacre. We know that in Italy” on 27 June 1980 “a civilian plane was shot down in peacetime, this is the truth, we still don’t know who shot it down, but we will know when our country has the strength to ask for answers from the Friendly countries and allies who still don’t tell us.”

It is the night in which Daria Bonfietti lost her brother who was among the 81 people on board the DC-9 Itavia Bologna-Palermo shot down in the skies of Ustica on the night of 27 June 1980. More than forty years have passed. The flight left Bologna two hours late and was headed to Palermo. It was supposed to land 15 minutes after 9pm. However, it was lost on radar shortly before 9am that evening. It was said there was a structural failure, a bomb on board, but the trials over the years tell of a battle that night in the Italian skies. A reconstruction that reached a final ruling in the Supreme Court.

Not even the declassification of the documents on the massacres requested by the Renzi government brought new details. «That night he is absent in the public administration papers. There is nothing from 1980 and subsequent years. There is nothing at the Ministry of Transport which is instead the one that immediately appoints a commission to ascertain what happened. The appraisals are from 1982 and then there is nothing else” Daria Bonfietti explained to Vanity Fair.

While over the years it has been reconstructed what happened that night in the Italian skies, it is not equally clear what forces were at play in what the judge Prior Rosary called it an air war. The scheduled flight IH870, which departed from Bologna and headed to Palermo, was operated by the DC-9 I-TIGI aircraft (the latter acronym will return in the show dedicated to Ustica by Marco Paolini) of the airline Itavia. There were 81 passengers and crew members on board. The plane exploded in flight and fell into the Tyrrhenian Sea in the waters between the islands of Ponza and Ustica. The last contact with Rome-Ciampino airport, which was responsible for that section of the Ambra 13 airway, was at 8.59pm. 5 minutes passed, but no one from the flight responded to the call for authorization to begin descent on Palermo. Hence the contact attempts by the control towers in Rome and Palermo and also by two flights on the same route. No reply.

The rescue operations started at 9.25pm ​​directed by the Martina Franca air rescue command. Helicopters took off from Ciampino at 9.55pm to search the area of ​​the probable accident. The plane was reported missing. Only the following morning did a rescue helicopter identify some debris on the surface about 110 km north of Ustica. Then the other pieces of the plane and the bodies of the passengers arrive. Only 38 bodies were found.

The day of 27 June 2024 opens with the traditional commemoration ceremony in the City Council Hall at Palazzo d’Accursio, where at 11.30 the relatives of the victims will meet the Mayor of Bologna Matteo Lepore, the President of the Emilia-Romagna Region Stefano Bonaccini and the president of the Association of Relatives of the Victims of the Ustica massacre Daria Bonfietti.

At 9.15pm, Parco della Zucca hosts the show Always, everywhere with you you will find me by Concita De Gregorio, in which words and music intertwine starting from news and arriving at poetry. On stage, Erica Mou’s songs and voice become the music that heals the wounds of memory. The shows have free admission.