The sky of Nassiriya becomes silent and black just a moment after 10.40 Baghdad time. It is November 12, 2003. Twenty years ago to today. When the fiery lapilli of the great explosion are returning the torn bodies in slow motion, many have not yet understood the cataclysm that has struck the Italian military base in Iraq, dedicated to the wind that dominates Sardinia, the Mistral. There are the Carabinieri from the multinational special units. There are the young Sardinian soldiers of the glorious Sassari Brigade on a mission in the hell of the Middle East. At that moment in Sant'Antioco, an island within an island, deep in Sulcis, the clappers of the bell tower of the church of the Holy Martyr have not yet tolled nine in the morning.
The roar of hell
When the explosion has already devastated the land of Nassiriya, the bodies of those who survived are kneeling on the burning dust. The hands are gripped on the black blood that flows from every capillary that exploded together with the meteorite in the shape of a truck loaded with dynamite that two kamikazes launched against the tricolor base in a foreign land. Twenty years have passed, but those frames burn as they did then. Souls torn apart forever, those of the veterans and the families of twelve carabinieri, five Army soldiers, two civilians. With them, in the final celestial mission, also nine Iraqis.
Fire eyes
The eyes are fiery, unable to look at that massacre that still burns in the most torn desert ever, the Iraqi one. In the Italian headquarters, theoretically a peacekeeping mission in Iraq, hell never knocked, it directly broke through the entrance with a tanker overloaded with explosives, capable of blowing up any hope of life. The bodies, those forever turned upside down by hell, are lying among a cataclysm of tangled metal sheets as only a hurricane of dynamite can do.
Son of Sardinia
They leave their lives in a foreign and distant land forever. The most dramatic return journey is the one that disastrous history reserves for Silvio Olla, 32 years old, a Sardinian non-commissioned officer of the 151st Regiment of the Sassari Brigade. A boy all generosity and dedication. The same one that took him away from his family and his Sant'Antioco. Every year, on that cursed day, the intimate tears of memory flow silently, as if the truth about that massacre should never give way to anger. Yet, despite the condolence, for many and for a long time, having been transformed into anniversary rhetoric, in their hearts, veterans and families of the victims do not despair of finding answers of justice and truth in their ordeal of memory. There are, in fact, infinite omissions regarding that massacre and just as many truths engraved in verdicts without appeal, written in civil sentences of the Cassation, which have become final. And then there are the confidential letters from the secret services, heavy as boulders, which had repeatedly predicted what then dramatically happened.
Judicial truth
A judicial truth that the State still tries to keep under wraps, almost as if that pronouncement of the Judges did not exist. A mission that was supposed to be one of peace, transformed first into carnage and then into a merciful Western surrender to the Taliban. An Italian presence in Nasiriyah which over the years has increasingly fueled endless suspicions as to why the Sardinian-Italian contingent was deployed in that area, as dangerous as it is unknown. We certainly know that operational base in the heart of Iraq, with a double flag, that of the four Moors and the tricolour, was located right in the land of oil and uranium. What is disconcerting is the procedural truth with those repeated alarms from Sismi, the secret services that had alerted the leaders of the Ancient Babylon Mission.
The 007 alarms
The timing and precision of the military 007 messages is disarming. The first message is from October 23: "an attack on a target is planned within two weeks at the latest." On October 25, with precision down to the colors of the vehicle, they wrote: "the attack will be carried out with a Russian-made truck with a darker cabin than the rest." On November 5, they informed the mission commander: «a group of terrorists of Syrian and Yemeni nationality had moved to Nassirya». A mission without protection and without security. The terrorists themselves will confess it: "she was chosen for her obvious vulnerability".
Nassiriya Special
Facts and misdeeds that will be put under the spotlight in the Videolina special broadcast today on the first Sardinian broadcaster at 10.40, the exact time of the massacre twenty years ago. The special also features an exclusive and dramatic interview with a veteran of that attack, Riccardo Saccotelli. The explosive content of secret service cables will also be examined during the program. The special will also be repeated at 3.00 pm and 11.00 pm, again today on Videolina.
