For everyone he was "Snuffy", the long-nosed admiral. Leighton Warren Smith, son of a pig farmer from Alabama, Southern United States, has bombed the deepest Vietnam 280 times as an attack fighter pilot in his life. The annals of that lethal war credit him for having destroyed even the Thanh Hoa Bridge, the most resistant in all of North Vietnam. In 1994 he became Commander in Chief of the United States Navy Forces in Europe and of the NATO Allied Forces in Southern Europe. These are the nefarious years of NATO operations in Bosnia. Few know what is really happening in that land of crows and the dead. Smith is in charge of those war operations.

Snuffy knows everything

He, on the other hand, knows everything. He knows, like few others, the impact of those bombs that planes drop like torrential rain on civilian and military targets. He repeats it to the highest in rank and clashes without half measures with the proponents of the insane theory that it is necessary to "bomb for peace". On July 31, 1996, with a twist, in the middle of the war, he renounced the leadership of the United States Navy and NATO forces in Europe. The abandonment is premature, unexpected, in many ways without an explanation. He, however, knew everything, including the kind of bullets that were plentifully hurling themselves, without a tomorrow, in that land of blood and fratricidal war. Before leaving his post, however, it is August 31, 1995, in the NATO headquarters of southern Europe, in Naples, he gathers all the Italian military leaders and beyond.

Italy, always deny

There are the Chiefs of Staff of the three Weapons and of Defense. Desert shirt, short sleeves, graduated with the highest honors, a microphone in his hand and a painter's easel on his right. The sign illustrating his counterparts from the Bel Paese is not encrypted. Far from it. The representation is geographical and numerical: "We bombed in 359 areas, with 3,500 shots". It is much more than a confession. Along with the number of "targets" hit, there is also the cruelest admission: "we used depleted uranium weapons". The message is all too clear: the presence of soldiers, even in a "peacekeeping" position, to keep the peace, can be lethal. The information is reserved for military leaders who, however, forget about it after a few years. The "forgetful" of the Italian Defense are so "distracted" that they end up sending the Italian soldiers, most of them will be Sardinians, with the Sassari Brigade, directly in those areas hit by lethal depleted uranium bullets. They deny everything, though. And the first to deny those facts is the Minister of Defense of the time, Sergio Mattarella, the current Head of State, who, on 27 September 2000, affirmed in Montecitorio: "First of all, I would like to reaffirm that to date no military of our contingent in Kosovo was repatriated because he was suffering from leukemia and that no suspected cases of this disease have ever emerged. It should also be excluded that the two fatal cases of acute leukemia that occurred in the armed forces, the first six years ago, the second last year, are linked to depleted uranium. In the second case, the young soldier had been employed in Bosnia, precisely in Sarajevo, where there has never been any use of depleted uranium ».

The state massacre

Judicial rulings will say something else. The two soldiers, one of whom Sardinian, died of acute leukemia caused by depleted uranium, the same for which "Snuffy" had warned all the Italian military leaders. After them, the silent massacre of soldiers involved in those peacekeeping missions never stopped. The Military Observatory keeps the sad accounts of the crosses: 7600 Italian soldiers who fell ill with cancer due to the depleted uranium bullets used by NATO during the 1999 bombings in Yugoslavia and, of these, 400 died. Denial has always been the rule. The reports at the time read: the analyzes made it possible to confirm that the levels of radioactive pollution in the areas where our soldiers operate are below the safety limits set by Italian regulations for our territory.

All false

Obviously, all false. The Italian courts, the civil and administrative ones, in hundreds of sentences, overturn "the truth of the state" to affirm the one that condemns the Ministry of Defense to compensate for damages of all kinds. A real judicial massacre. The lawyer who upsets the Palazzo dei Generali is the "black beast" of Via XX Settembre, the Roman seat of the war department. For 20 years Angelo Fiore Tartaglia, case after case, has been putting a State, that of Defense, against the wall, which would like to deny justice to the victims of depleted uranium, servants of that nation that sent them "knowingly" to fall ill in Kosovo as in Bosnia.

The landing in the Balkans

Now those legal facts cross the border of the Bel Paese to land directly in the courtrooms of the Balkans, starting from the Court of Belgrade. The pool of lawyers decided to ask the Italian victims' lawyer to lead the defense of thousands of civilian victims affected by the bombings that "Snuffy" wanted to avoid. 3,300 Bosnian citizens have already signed the legal delegation to accuse NATO accused of having devastated the Balkans with depleted uranium, causing thousands of civilian victims and more. It is not a walk in the park for NATO, which thought it had long since closed its accounts with sloth and conscience. For the first time in the history of Kosovo, Bosnia and the Balkans, Italy, Sardinia and military justice, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, NATO, verifies and transmits to the Belgrade Court a Note on the Minutes, of the which we reproduce in full, exclusively, the text.

Born & immunity

In the document, in no uncertain terms, he declares: NATO is immune from jurisdiction by virtue of cooperation agreements and the presence of a NATO liaison officer in Serbia. As if to say: let's stop everything, you can't prosecute us because our organization enjoys boundless immunity. Including war crimes, therefore, according to the immunity pleaded by NATO, they can "enjoy" immunity, the most total and without appeal.

In Bosnia the "black beast"

The communication is dated 21 March last, but it emerged only yesterday in the context of the acquisition of the procedural documents in Belgrade. A last stage move, which smacks of confession, given that the jurisdictional immunity invoked is nothing more than the extreme attempt to escape the trial.Angelo Fiore Tartaglia does not play at home, but does not break up. Every day, in that Balkan land razed to the ground by depleted uranium, awareness of the many victims and the infinite environmental devastation caused by those bombings grows. The moves to annihilate NATO's "confessory" request were filed yesterday in Belgrade. The lawyer for the victims of depleted uranium does not get lost in gossip: the agreement referred to in the NATO Note was signed after the facts in dispute. In practice we will be faced with an immunity signed in 2005 which cannot be retroactive for the period 1995-2000.

Lawyer without hesitation

There is more in the reply of the Italian lawyer: "The presence of a liaison officer, who took office after the facts in dispute, does not acquire a remedial effect in respect of conduct which in any case constitutes a violation of the fundamental norms of international humanitarian law ( consisting in having committed war crimes) ». The accusation in the notes filed in Belgrade by Angelo Fiore Tartaglia is an indictment without appeal: "The conduct of NATO, in the light of the factual details illustrated in the introductory document, is certainly classifiable as a" war crime "as it is incontrovertibly attributable to the express provisions of the second paragraph of art. 8 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

War crimes

This article reads verbatim as follows: "For the purposes of the Statute," war crimes "are meant: serious violations of the Geneva Convention of 12 August 1949, that is to say one of the following acts carried out against persons or property protected by the rules of Geneva Conventions: voluntary homicide; torture or inhuman treatment, including biological experiments; voluntarily cause great suffering or serious injury to physical integrity or health ".

Sardinia risk

The trial in Belgrade gets underway. In Sardinia, however, the "radioactive" images of Quirra and Teulada, with the use of tracking missiles based on Thorium, much more dangerous than depleted uranium, open up a disturbing scenario. NATO, together with the Italian forces, has repeatedly operated in the Sardinian polygons with very serious consequences on the environmental level and beyond. The question arises: will they ask for immunity also for the disaster in the land of the Nuraghi?

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