Ustica massacre: the investigating judge of Rome orders new investigations and returns the documents to the Prosecutor's Office

The investigating judge of the Rome court, Livio Sabatini, has returned to the prosecutor's office the documents on the proceedings for the Ustica massacre of 27 June 1980 and ordered new investigations. The decision comes after the revocation of the request for dismissal by the chief prosecutor Francesco Lo Voi, in light of the French willingness to transfer all the documentation on the massacre to Italy. That evening the DC-9 Itavia crashed in the Tyrrhenian Sea, causing 81 deaths.

"The admissibility of the revocation (of the dismissal request, ed.) is the most reasonable solution, favoring a hoped-for rapid investigative investigation in order to reach the completion of the procedural phase of the two criminal proceedings with the confirmation of the dismissal request or with the exercise of criminal action". This was underlined by the investigating judge of Rome Livio Sabatini in the order with which he ordered the immediate return to the prosecutor's office of the documents relating to the proceedings on the Ustica massacre.

“Having considered the admissibility of the revocation of the dismissal request, considering the request for the return of the documents formulated by the public prosecutor and the absence of further requests to the investigating judge, the immediate return of the documents to the public prosecutor must be ordered for the determinations of competence”, writes the judge.

The Embassy of France would like to point out that the French authorities are not aware of any pending requests for mutual legal assistance (on the Ustica case, ed.) and that they would be very grateful to the Italian authorities to clarify if, for their part, they should identify pending requests". This is reported in the order of the investigating judge of Rome who, accepting the request of the prosecutor's office, returned the documents relating to the investigation into the massacre, revoking the request for dismissal. In particular, we read in the order, “the French Embassy specifies that two documents were transmitted in 1986 and 1990 from the French Ministry of Defense to the Italian one and expressly excludes any previous resistance in providing legal assistance”.