On 20 March 1994 in Mogadishu, Somalia, Ilaria Alpi, together with her cameraman Miran Hrovatin, was murdered. The journalist had carried out several missions for TG3 since 1992 to report on the UN peace mission ‘Restore Hope’ and the Somali context of the civil war that broke out following the fall of Siad Barre’s regime, in 1991. The investigation of the Alpi-Hrovatin case focused on the journalist’s last report, which should have been broadcast on the evening of 20 March. Only fragments and incomplete footage of that report remain, as the full version never reached Italy. Neither the motive, nor the instigator, nor the executors of that murder are still clear.
Giancarlo Marocchino is one of the main protagonists of the Alpi-Hrovatin case. He is a Piedmontese transporter who was an influential businessman in Mogadishu, for several years. For the SISMI, according to one of the declassified notes, he was “an able and cunning entrepreneur” to work for everyone and to disentangle himself in Somalia ravaged by civil war. According to SISMI, he was involved in the logistics and he was suspected of trafficking in arms and in toxic and radioactive waste. The latter are suspicions still not confirmed by the courts. In the background of the investigation, it is also necessary to keep in mind the Somali context, and in particular the Italian involvement in Somalia.
The final report of the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry into the death of Ilaria Alpi and Miran Hrovatin, approved in February 2006, analysed various causes of the murder, taking also into account fundamentalism and criminality in the country. An analysis of Ilaria Alpi’s notebooks bring to three lines of investigation from the themes of the last reportage: arms trafficking, toxic waste trafficking and the effects of Italian cooperation in Somalia.
Italian cooperation in Somalia
Before the beginning of the civil war in Somalia, Italy was a close ally of the government of Siad Barre, Somali president-dictator until 1991. For instance, Italy sold arms to Somalia which stockpiled them in various warehouses in the country, and they were object of interest of the militias and warlords, following the fall of the regime. It is generally acknowledged that Italy supported, economically and politically, Siad Barre even at a time when the regime appeared completely discredited in the eyes of international public opinion and the majority of the Somali people.
Among Alpi’s lines of enquiry was Italy’s cooperation with developing countries, particularly Somalia. The journalist was interested in the phenomenon of aid in general and how it was managed, as well as whether it could have been used for illicit enrichment rather than the purpose for which it was given. In particular, Alpi was interested in the Garoe-Bosaso road and the Shifco fishing project.
Italian parliament started development cooperation in Somalia in 1979, with substantial funding. In particular, during the period 1986-1989, the volume of Italian investment in Somalia and the Horn of Africa increased exponentially and it was only interrupted by the outbreak of civil war in 1992. The final report of the parliamentary commission states that in the decade 1981-1990, 80% of the funds were allocated to the implementation of projects defined as ‘physical’. Out of the total, 49% were allocated to the construction of large infrastructures, 21% to productive investments and 15% to investments defined as “socio-communitarian” (projects that can be considered as benefiting the population). This set-up of Italian cooperation has been marked by programming shortcomings and a lack of coordination with multilateral and international initiatives. Moreover, the actual success of these cooperation initiatives was heavily undermined by the prerogative to protect the interests of Italian companies, lobbies and pressure groups in Somali, not taking into account the real needs of the country.
The analysis of these policies of international cooperation was conducted during the season of Tangentopoli. In this context, a number of enquiries brought to light a reality in which allocations for cooperation with developing countries were a significant part of the entire Italian bribe system. The investigations uncovered costly and unnecessary projects, multi-billion dollar allocations, bribes and trafficking of all kinds, including arms to Somalia. In this regard, the 1994 Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry into Cooperation with Developing Countries went on a mission to Djibouti, Somalia and Kenya from 29 January to 31 January 1996. The report stressed that there had been many management errors and that a lot of money had gone into the wrong hands.
Among the most controversial works financed by the Italian government there were Garoe-Bosaso road and the port of Bosaso, as well as the ocean fishing project and its fishing company ‘Shifco’. With regard to the road, the average cost per km was 605 million, which is disproportionate to the average expenditure in Italy, but also compared to other roads built with development cooperation funds in the Horn of Africa. Moreover, at the beginning of 1979, an attempt was made to undertake an ocean fishing project marked by disasters and failures. This led to the creation of the ‘Shifco’ company, which arranged for the transfer of fishing vessels after the anti-Barre war of 1990 to the waters of the Gulf of Aden. There is a suspicion that this initiative, characterised by serious design errors, served firstly to enrich private Italian and Somali groups, even not necessarily through illicit means.
Arms trafficking in Somalia
Before embarking on her last trip, Ilaria Alpi had identified the area of Bosaso, a port city in the north of Somalia, as an area of ‘journalistic interest’ and she had the intention to investigate there about arms trafficking and the intertwining with ‘bad cooperation’ and the trafficking of toxic waste. Indeed, Alpi pursue some research on the Shifco ships, looking for evidence. The last interview before the murder seems to focus on this aspect.
The cameraman Alberto Calvi, with whom Alpi had worked on previous missions to Somalia, reported that the journalist had always looked for evidence in relation to arms and drug trafficking. As a possible lead he followed that of the use of the Shifco ships and the role of Mugne, director of the fishing company, and Giancarlo Marocchino. Alpi’s intuition was guided by the testimonies of the Somali population, who claimed that the Shifco vessels were involved in the transport of arms during Siad Barre’s regime and that this traffic was still going on.
However the committee’s final report notes that Marocchino and Mugne did not know each other and they operated in ‘completely different and separate sectors’: the former carried out transport and acted as a factotum for military contingents, the latter managed fishing vessels and a livestock company. The report also shows that arms trafficking was directed from Somalia to neighbouring countries and that the arms sold came from the abandoned warehouses of the Barre regime. General Pucci, Director of SISMI at the time, stated that Italy had no influence in the area where the arms trafficking took place, although the services were aware of it. Basically, there was remote monitoring but there was no access to the Bosaso area, for example, because it was outside the Italian area of interest.
Toxic waste trafficking in Somalia
The journalist Rita Del Prete witnessed that Ilaria Alpi told her that in Somalia “roads were being built from nowhere to nowhere, made for digging and dumping toxic debris”. This road was supposed to be in the area of Garoe and it was probably used to hide radioactive waste. In this regard, it is known that on 15 March 1994, Ilaria Alpi and Miran Hrovatin drove halfway the Garoe-Bosaso road. Moreover, Alpi was investigating a traffic of radioactive waste dumped in front of the Somali coast. The latter has been discovered as a fact of which all Somalis were aware and which consider powerless.
On the hypothesis involving the Garoe-Bosaso road, an episode involving Giancarlo Marocchino is noted. In 2003 the engineer Vittorio Brofferio, who was in charge of the construction of the road from June 1987 to December 1988, sent an e-mail to the managers of the Alpi’s website (www.ilariaalpi.it), reporting an episode in which Marocchino, who was in charge of convoys for the cooperative which built the road, showed a telex to Brofferio. It read ‘receive containers to be buried in uninhabited areas along our road, on the sole condition that you do not open them to check the contents’. However, according to the parliamentary committee, these facts have not been objectively confirmed or denied.
Moreover, the investigations carried out by the public prosecutor’s office into waste trafficking have never had any significant results. However, the public prosecutor’s office in Milan instituted criminal proceedings on the basis of statements made by Gianpiero Sebri, who, also accusing himself, reported on a ramified organisation involved in international waste trafficking. In his statements, Sebri referred to the URANO Project: a complex project for the disposal of toxic waste by burying it in suitable areas, including Somalia. This project was conceived and promoted by Guido Garelli through the Rio de Oro Mining Company. The Public Prosecutor’s Office of Asti investigated the relationship between Ezio Scaglione and Giancarlo Marocchino, intercepting several telephone conversations about their involvement in a waste traffic to Somalia. According to the Prosecutor’s Office of Asti, Scaglione procured clients in Italy, while Marocchino ensured the complicity of the local authorities and gave logistical support to the operation. However, it should be pointed out that the criminal investigation did not establish any responsibility.
With regard to the radioactive waste hypothesis on the Somali coast, in 2011 Paul Moreira, a prestigious name in European investigative journalism, produced the documentary ‘Toxic Somalia’. In the documentary, the French journalist follows the path opened up by Ilaria Alpi to investigate the illicit trafficking started in northern Italy and ended up in Somalia, with the approval of the then interim president Ali Mahd. The reason for this trafficking was the cost of disposing of toxic waste: the more toxic the material, the higher the cost of disposal in advanced countries. Consequently, one of the routes taken is illegal disposal in developing countries.
Moreira documents a situation in which 2005 tsunami in Somalia brought large ‘bins’ back to the coast. The journalist interviews the Somali population, who report that the arrival of the bins has led to many illnesses in the nearby village (diarrhoea, eye infections, skin problems, difficulty breathing) and who denounce the fact that the coasts are not monitored by the coastguards and anyone can dump whatever they want. These ‘bins’ have handles that make it easy to throw the cargo off the ship. In 2006, an NGO found 40 of these bins and witnessed that many of them had lost their contents and spilled them into the sea. The NGO’s mission was led by Andreas Bernstorff, a toxic waste specialist, who states that he found no identification marks on the barrels and that they were not opened because the necessary safety measures for toxic material were not in place. This is just a hypothesis due to the lack of identification marks and the presence of welds all over the container. Hence, no one apparently took the time to check the contents of the canisters, and the then Deputy Prime Minister of the Government of the Somali Republic, Abdirahman Ibbi, stated that he tried to send UN personnel, but they did not even go near the canisters. A further problem in analysing the contents of these bins is that the area in question is under the control of the terrorist group Al Shabaab and security risks are feared.
Moreira then heads to Merca, the capital of the Somali pirates, where piracy is the only economic activity since it seems that the pollution of this waste has exterminated all the fish. The Somali pirates accuse the West of dumping toxic waste in their waters and that if you dive into the sea, you get skin problems once you get out of the water. To verify these reports, Moreira went to the hospital in Mogadishu. There he finds many children with infections, diseases and malformations that can be traced back to exposure to toxic materials (mainly diseases affecting the urinary system). The hospital confirms that since the beginning of the civil war the number of children born with congenital malformations has tripled. The problem here is that the hospital does not have the necessary means to accurately research the causes of these malformations as, for example, there is no analysis laboratory.
Alpi-Hrovatin Case in 2020 and CIA reports
Twenty-six years after the journalist’s murder in Somalia, the Alpi-Hrovatin case is still being discussed, thanks in particular to the journal L’Espresso and Andrea Palladino, who managed to get hold of unpublished reports from the American secret services. After a year and a half of investigation, the CIA report adds important elements to the Somali context, the subject of Ilaria Alpi’s last reportage.
As a result, at the time of the civil war there were two main factions: Ali Mahdi, allied with the United Nations forces, and Mohammed Farah Hassan known as ‘Aidid’, at the head of the Islamist forces. Therefore, in September 1993, the CIA was on the trail of the latter and monitored his every move. The objective was to understand who was financing the Islamist faction and where the arms used by the militias came from. An increase in the flow of arms to this faction was reported in August 1993. Since Aidid’s objective was to make the Restore Hope mission fail, according to the CIA, the purchase of arms had two purposes: 1) to be ready for combat; 2) to convince other warlords to ally themselves with the Islamists.
According to the CIA, Aidid’s supporters used the transport company owned by Ahmed Duale and Giancarlo Marocchino. This company also functioned as a logistical hub for Aidid’s supporters. The same company was well known in the Italian contingent and ITALFOR command circles, issuing invoices for thousands of dollars for all kinds of supplies. Moreover, it had often been used as logistical support for Italian cooperation before the conflict.
In conclusion, twenty-six years after the murder in Somalia, the Alpi-Hrovatin case remains an open wound of secrets that endure to this day. Reflecting and bringing the truth to this case could represent a victory for those who put their lives at risk to bring the voice of the most disadvantaged countries and at the same time reflect on the effects of Italian action on a country like Somalia, so as to offer concrete help and a desirable future to a country that has sunk into oblivion.
- Rainer Maria Barattihttps://migrazioniontheroad.largemovements.it/en/author/admin/
- Rainer Maria Barattihttps://migrazioniontheroad.largemovements.it/en/author/admin/
- Rainer Maria Barattihttps://migrazioniontheroad.largemovements.it/en/author/admin/
- Rainer Maria Barattihttps://migrazioniontheroad.largemovements.it/en/author/admin/