1980 Libyan Air Force MiG-23 crash

The 1980 Libyan Air Force MiG-23 crash, also known as the Castelsilano air crash, is an aviation accident that occurred on 18 July 1980 near Castelsilano, in Calabria. The accident involved a Libyan Air Force MiG-23MS, with the body of the pilot, named Ezzedin Fadah El Khalil, found lifeless a short distance from the wreckage of the aircraft. Although the official versions of both the Libyan and the Italian governments hypothesised that the pilot had been taken ill and, having engaged the autopilot, would have crashed once the fuel ran out, alternative hypotheses about the causes have developed; in particular, links have been hypothesised with the Ustica massacre, which occurred on 27 June of the same year. Giovanni Spadolini, defence minister from 1983 to 1987, once said that whoever solved the mystery of the MiG would be able to understand the Ustica massacre.

Judicial analyses of the accident

According to the records of the inquiry into the Ustica massacre, signed by investigating judge Rosario Priore, the official version, produced by the Italian-Libyan commission, would appear to be plausibly refuted by some testimonies and circumstances which would have made it possible to backdate the fall of the Libyan aircraft, placing it immediately after the DC-9 tragedy.

Among these was the autopsy report by Anselmo Zurlo and Erasmo Rondanelli, in which the two pathologists described the state of decomposition of the pilot's body as «very advanced», but which nevertheless dated the death to 18 July. The two doctors stated that on the following day they had delivered to the Crotone Public Prosecutor's Office a supplementary report in which they backdated the pilot's death precisely on the basis of the state of putrefaction, a supplement that does not appear among the records acquired by the prosecutor's office, which according to the judges of the Crotone Public Prosecutor's Office never existed, and according to investigating judge Priore was instead removed. There are other testimonies, gathered at the site and in the surrounding areas, that placed the event at a date close to or coinciding with the disappearance of the Itavia flight.

Moreover, in 1999 it was hypothesised that the pilot's corpse could have been kept in a refrigerated cell at the Gioia del Colle military airport.

During the trial, the work of the prosecution's experts and that of the defendants' experts clashed on the technical level:

Prosecution consultancy Dalle Mese-Casarosa-Held: appointed by the investigating judge in October 1990, composed of professors Carlo Casarosa, Enzo Dalle Mese and, subsequently, Manfred Held; it produced a document entitled Technical-scientific expert report in May 1993 which disagreed with the conclusions of the previous commission, not considering the hypothesised trajectory consistent with the radar tracks, and stating that the fighter did not have sufficient fuel to reach the Sila.

Defendants' consultancy Dell'Oro-Di Natale: appointed on 22 February 1991, composed of engineer Giorgio Dell'Oro and Franco Di Natale; it produced the report entitled Documentation in the records of the flight accident of the Libyan MiG23 serial number 6950 analysis of the validity and completeness of the available data, which states that the fighter's fuel would have been sufficient.

Defendants' consultancies Brindisino-Di Natale-Ludovisi: appointed on 5 July 1993; they produced the document entitled Critical notes of the Defendants' Consultants on the technical-scientific expert report concerning the MiG-23 MM 6590 of the Libyan air force, which crashed in the Sila on 18.07.80, in which the findings of the Dalle Mese-Casarosa-Held expert report are contested point by point. This document was followed by the response of the prosecution's panel of experts, Responses of the Expert Panel to the observations made by the Consultants of the Investigated Party, of 14 December 1993.

On 15 June 1994 the experts of the investigated party filed a further expert report, which was again followed, on 21 March 1995, by a prosecution expert report entitled Observations of the Expert Panel on the contents of the document submitted to the Judicial Authority by the Consultants of the Investigated Party on 15 June 94. The investigated party did not consider a further expert report necessary. Nevertheless, the conclusions of the party consultants were adopted by the investigating judge.

The prosecution's technical investigation into the weather conditions of 18 July and the operating characteristics of the MiG-23's autopilot concluded that the aircraft should have fallen further west and well before reaching the Calabrian coast. The correspondence between the radar track detected by Otranto was also considered incompatible with what was concluded in the report of the Italian-Libyan commission.

On the copy of the black box (FDR) film available to the judicial authority, there were recorded neither the angle of …