FORMER Italian premier Giuliano Amato said on Saturday that a French air force missile brought down a passenger jet over the Mediterranean in 1980 in a failed bid to assassinate Libya’s then leader Muammar Gadaffi.

In an interview with Rome daily La Repubblica, the former PM challenged French President Emmanuel Macron to either deny or confirm his accusation.

Itavia Flight 870 crashed into the Tyrrhenian Sea between the islands of Ponza and Ustica while it was en route from Bologna to Palermo in Italy on June 27 1980, killing all 81 people on board.

Mr Amato said he is convinced that France hit the plane while targeting a Libyan military jet. A few weeks after the crash, the wreckage of a Libyan MiG, with the badly decomposed body of its pilot, was discovered in the remote mountains of southern Calabria.

While acknowledging he has no hard proof, Mr Amato also said that Italy tipped off Colonel Gadaffi, and so the Libyan leader, who was heading back to Tripoli from a meeting in Yugoslavia, didn’t board the Libyan military jet.

The cause of the crash is one of modern Italy’s enduring mysteries: some experts say a bomb exploded on board, others say examination of the wreckage, pulled up from the seafloor years later, indicate it was hit by a missile. Radar traces indicated a flurry of aircraft activity in that part of the skies when the plane went down.

If Mr Amato’s assertion proves to be true, it demonstrates the readiness of major powers to assassinate another nation’s leader at a huge cost in civilian lives.

Mr Amato said: “The most credible version is that of responsibility of the French air force, in complicity with the Americans and whoever participated in a war in the skies that evening of June 27.” 

Nato had planned to “simulate an exercise, with many planes in action, during which a missile was supposed to be fired” with the Libyan leader as the target, Mr Amato said.

In the aftermath of the crash, French, United States and Nato officials denied any military activity in the skies that night.

Mr Amato said the French president can remove any doubts by “either demonstrating that this thesis is unfounded or … by offering the deepest apologies to Italy and to the families of the victims in the name of his government.”

Mr Macron’s office said it wouldn’t immediately comment on Mr Amato’s remarks.