«It was a necessary meeting to remember Italo Toni and Graziella De Palo 40 years after their death. The commitment must be to go on to rebuild all the pieces that are missing to restore justice to two journalists who have been killed and whose bodies have never even been found “. These are the words spoken by the Speaker of the Chamber, Roberto Fico, at the end of the meeting that took place this morning, September 2, in Montecitorio, with the family members of the two journalists who disappeared in circumstances never clarified in Lebanon exactly 40 years ago.
“We reiterated our commitment to give justice and a little serenity to their families, which I thank. The State and the Republic must be close to all those families who have suffered similar tragedies. I renew my commitment and my human and institutional closeness to the relatives of Italo Toni and Graziella De Palo », concluded Fico.
«We thank President Fico who received the relatives of Italo Toni and Graziella De Palo on the occasion of a fortieth anniversary still without truth and justice. We are not here only to remember, but above all to ask the institutions, each for its part, to make every contribution to the Rome prosecutor’s office, which has identified a possible track, so that at least we can identify the chain of misdirections, horrors and omissions. »Said President Giulietti.
“For this – he added – we hope that the still classified documents relating to the kidnapping and murder of our two colleagues will be made available to the judicial authority so as to help shed light on an extremely bitter story, not only for the denial justice, but also because the Toni and De Palo families do not even have a place where they can remember their loved ones ».
Request reiterated also by the lawyer who is following the case for the Fnsi, Giulio Vasaturo. “This meeting has strengthened our hope of finally breaking down the rubber wall against which, for 40 years, the search for justice and truth of the relatives of Italo Toni and Graziella De Palo and of the entire community of Italian journalists has been broken. We trust – the lawyer hoped – that all state institutions and, in particular the heads of our intelligence apparatuses, are sensitive to the invocation so that all documents relating to the activities of the SISMI center in Beirut in 1980 are delivered to the judiciary. reason to believe that an important and perhaps decisive piece of the truth we are looking for is still kept in the archives of our secret services ».
Italo Toni, originally from Sassoferrato (Ancona) was 50 years old. Graziella De Palo, her life and work partner, was 24 years old. They went to Lebanon to document the living conditions of the Palestinian refugees and the political and military situation in that area. In December 2019, under pressure from family members, the Rome prosecutor’s office reopened the investigation to develop the statements of a new witness, whose name was not published.
