Moby Prince, the Usa Trail

“Mayday, Mayday, Mayday, Moby Prince, we’re colliding! We are on fire! We need help!”: this is the dramatic message sent 25 years ago at 22:26 on 10 April 1991, from the cruiser Moby Prince, which entered into collision with the oil tanker Agip Abruzzo, in the roadstead of the port of Livorno.

A cry for help that was unheard: 140 die after waiting in vain for hours for help. A request for justice unheard: for 25 years, the relatives sought in vain for the truth. After three inquiries and two processes. Yet the truth emerges overwhelmingly from the facts.

That night in the roadstead of Livorno, there’s a heavy traffic of US military and militarized ships that carry some of the weapons used in the first Gulf War to the US base, Camp Darby (which is situated by the port).

There are also other mysterious ships. La Gallant II (code name Theresa), a US militarized ship that, immediately after the incident, hurriedly leaves the port of Livorno. 21 Oktoobar II , property of the company Shifco, whose flotilla, donated by the Cooperazione italiana to Somalia officially for fishing, is used to transport US arms and toxic, sometimes even radioactive waste to Somalia and to resupply arms to Croatia for the war against Yugoslavia.

After finding evidence of such trafficking, the journalist Ilaria Alpi and her employee, Miran Hrovatin, are murdered in 1994 at Mogadiscio in an ambush organized by the CIA with the help of Gladio and the Italian Secret Services [1].

In all likelihood, during the evening of 10 April, the transfer of US arms is underway in the roadstead of Livorno. These arms, instead of flowing back to Camp Darby, are secretly sent to Somalia, Croatia and other areas, not least Gladio’s warehouses in Italy [2]. When the collision occurs, the person leading the operation – which must be the US Command of Camp Darby – immediately tries to wipe out any evidence. So explains a series of “shady points:
• the signal of Moby Prince, at least 2 miles from the port, which arrives profoundly disturbed;
• the silence of Livorno Radio, the public manager of telecommunications, that does not call Moby Prince;
• the head of the port, Sergio Albanese, “engaged in other radio communications”, who does not guide the rescue mission and immediately afterwards is promoted to Admiral for his merits;
• the lack (or rather disappearance) of radar traces and satellite images in particular on the position of the Agip Abruzzo, which had just arrived at Livorno from Egypt, oddly in record time (4.5 days instead of 14);
• the tampering with the ferry under seizure, where instruments essential for the investigation disappear.

Thus, this makes the Moby Prince incident appear like an accident that is nothing out of ordinary. The same is true for the liability of the commander.

The victims’ relatives have now managed to initiate a parliamentary commission of inquiry, not only to deliver justice to their [particular] cases, but [also] to “close an unworthy chapter of Italian history”. A chapter that will remain open if the commission will limit itself, as it usually does, to the external inquiry of Camp Darby, the US base at the centre of the Moby Prince massacre. The same inquisition by judges Casson and Mastelloni in the investigation into “Gladio”, a coup-creating organization. One of the US/Nato bases that - writes Ferdinando Imposimato, Honorary President of the Supreme Court (la Corte di Cassazione), will provide explosives for the massacres – from Piazza Fontana to Capaci and Via d’Amelio.

The Mayday of Moby Prince is the Mayday of our democracy.