Illaria: the stinging truth

The docu-fiction “Ilaria Alpi – L’ultimo viaggio” (which can be viewed on the Rai Tre website) [1] sheds light on the homicide of the journalist and her cameraman Miran Hrovatin on 20 March 1994 at Mogadishu. This is above all thanks to evidence uncovered by the journalist Luigi Grimaldi. Illaria and Miran were assassinated in an ambush organized by the CIA, assisted by Gladio and the Italian Secret Services. Why? had discovered CIA arms trafficking via a fleet of the company Schifco, which had been given by “Cooperazione italiana” to Somalia, officially for fishing.

As it happens, at the beginning of the nineties, Shifco ships were used together with ships from Lithuania, to transport US arms and toxic/radioactive wastes to Somalia and to supply arms to Croatia that was fighting a war against Yugoslavia. Something that is not mentioned in the docu-fiction: a Shifco ship, the 21 Oktoobar II (then registered under the name of Urgull in the flag state of Panama), was located on 10 April 1991 in the port of Livorno where a secret operation was underway for transferring US weapons returning to Camp Darby after the war against Iraq, and where the Moby Prince tragedy occurred in the course of which 140 people died.

In the Alpi case, after eight proceedings (with the conviction of a SomalI considered innocent by Illaria’s parents) and four parliamentary commissions, the truth is coming to light: what Ilaria had discovered and made notes on, notes that the secret services had made disappear. A truth of pressing, dramatic relevance today.

Operation “Restore Hope”, launched in December 1992, in Somalia, (a country of huge geostrategic importance) by President Bush, with the approval of the new-president Clinton, was the first mission of “humanitarian intermeddling”.

On the same justification, namely that military intervention is necessary when the survival of a people is in danger, Usa/Nato then launches wars against the following countries: Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and other operations such as those in Yemen and Ukraine. Prepared and accompanied by secret activities, under the sheepskin of “humanitarian”. An inquiry by the New York Times [2] has confirmed a CIA international network, which with airplanes provided by Qatar, Jordan and Saudi Arabia supplying the Syrian “rebels”, arms coming from Croatia via Turkey. By doing so, Croatia reciprocates to the CIA, the “favour” it received in the nineties.

When on 29 May, the daily newspaper Cumhuriyet published a video that shows that transit of such weapons through Turkey, President Erdogan declared that the newspaper’s editor would pay a “heavy price”.

21 years ago, Illaria Alpi’s attempt to demonstrate that the realities of war are not confined to what is put before our eyes, cost her her life. From that point on, war has become increasingly “covert”. This is confirmed by a report of the New York Times [3] on “Team 6”, the top-secret unit of the US Command for Special Operations, entrusted with “silent killings”. Its specialists “have orchestrated mortal actions from secret bases on the coasts of Somalia; in Afghanistan they are committed in fights so close, that they returned drenched in blood that is not theirs”, even killing with “primitive tomahawks”. Using espionage stations all over the world, camouflaged by “civilian employees of companies or embassy officials”, they follow those that “the United States wants to kill and capture”.

“Team 6” has become “a global machine for hunting down men”. Today, those that killed Ilaria Alpi are even more powerful.

But the truth is difficult to kill.

- On the theory of targeted assassinations in the context of counter-insurrectionary operations, read « Opération Phénix », by Arthur Lepic, Voltaire Network, 16 November 2004.
- "Targeted killings" increase under Obama”, Voltaire Network, 6 June 2010.
– “Gates renewing "targeted killings" team”, Voltaire Network, 6 January 2011.
– “Assassinations anonymous”, by Manlio Dinucci, Voltaire Network, 25 February 2012.