Ustica

Ustica is the name of a small island, about 9 km across, situated 52 km north of Capo Gallo, Italy. Roughly 1400 people live there. There is regular ferry service from the island to Palermo, Italy.

History

The island has been populated since about 1500 BC by Phonecian peoples. In ancient Greece, the Island was named Osteodes (ossuary) in memory of the thousands of Carthaginian mutaneers left there to die of hunger in the 4th century BC. The Romans renamed the island Ustica, Latin for burnt, for its black rocks.

In the 6th century, a Benedictine community settled in the island, but was soon forced to move because of ongoing wars between Europeans and Arabs. Attempts to colonize the island in the Middle Ages failed because of raids by Barbary pirates. Until the 1950s, Ustica was used as an island prison, though it is now a tourist attraction.

The DC-9 crash

The island become sadly famous on June 27, 1980, when a DC-9 airplane with 93 passengers was lost some miles offshore in an unusual crash.

In the following days, months, and years, a large amount of speculation developed as to the cause of the crash. Debates regarding military training, underground warfare between NATO and Libya, deleted radar records, and rectracted witnesses, all fed the uncertainty. The Italian government began an official investigation, but as of 2004 the investigation still continues.

The most prevalent unofficial hypothesis has been that an Italian military airplane shot down the DC-9 mistakenly. This hypothesis was given a great deal of credence on June 18, 1997, when the Italian media broke the news that radar records showed the plane being hit by a missile. On September 1, 1999, an Italian judge indicted four Italian generals for conspiracy, accusing them of hiding these radar records for nearly two decades.