The geominer and explosives expert Danilo Coppe, former consultant to the Court of Assizes of Bologna at the last trial for the massacre at the station, one of the experts appointed by the District Anti-Mafia Directorate of the Florence Public Prosecutor’s Office to shed light on the Moby Prince disaster in the which, just over 30 years ago, on the night of April 10, 1991, in front of the coasts of the port of Livorno, 140 people between passengers and crew died and there was only one survivor.
The public prosecutor of Florence, which with the DDA reopened the investigations – followed by the deputy prosecutor Gabriele Mazzotta – assigned 90 days to Coppe to answer the questions assigned, in particular whether there are new elements supporting the thesis of the presence of explosives on the Moby Prince putting in order all the appraisals made so far. Coppe will have to examine, on behalf of the Florentine magistrates, all the work done so far by the various consultants that have followed one another in these 30 years. But since there are still several finds kept by the Livorno magistracy, the geominer who, among other things, was commissioned to demolish the section of the Morandi Bridge in Genoa with explosives, will be able to examine those remains or look for others.
In 1992, a year after the disaster, a report by the Scientific Police spoke of the presence of explosives on board the Moby Prince, according to which “traces of civilian explosives were found, found inside a room in the bow of the ship, where probably a few moments before the collision, a deflagration occurred ». According to the forensic experts who sent the document to the then Minister of the Interior, on board the Moby Prince there were 5 types of civilian explosives, four of which were of high potential, and two of the military type.
“The analytical data obtained with the different techniques – wrote the Scientific Police in the document sent to the Interior Ministry – allowed us to identify the following compounds: the first five are typical of explosive compositions for civil use, called jellies-dynamites, while the other two they are mainly present in military explosives and demolition plastics (Semtex). It has been ascertained that the substances identified, with the sole exception of ammonium nitrate, are all high-potential explosives, both individually and in mixtures ». Now Danilo Coppe, the new explosives expert appointed by the Florence prosecutor’s office, will have to verify, with new instruments and technologies, whether the circumstance really has its foundation.
It would not be the first time that previous trial appraisals relating to explosives are called into question – it happened recently precisely for the Bologna massacre and even earlier for the Loggia massacre in Brescia – also due to the fact that the instruments used in past years were often badly calibrated and gave rise to false positives. Meanwhile, the new Commission of inquiry into the Moby Prince disaster, set up in May, has acquired a radio communications tape, never listened to until today because the specific recorder no longer in production was missing and now purchased by the parliamentary body, capable of reading and decrypt that type of tape.