In the Teulada elevation maps, “Antoni Panni” and “Perdas de Fogu” are two hills with less than two hundred meters of altitude, enclosed in a gigantic perimeter of barbed wire 49 kilometers long. From the dawn of time, adult cattle and newly weaned calves were the masters on these promontories. They were. Now there, for some time, they can no longer even come close. As if that infinite perimeter wall of rhomboidal iron and zinc network that surrounds the Sa Portedda polygon, that of Teulada were not enough, the military has further prohibited, complete with pointed steel concertina, even those two promontories of cistus and juniper. It is the year of the Lord 2012 when from Pisa, the logistics base of Cisam, the most advanced nucleus of the Navy for radioactivity, a group of experts sets out to turn the Capo Teulada polygon upside down.

Radiation wanted

They look for radioactive contamination of the soil. Stuff to make the skin crawl, for soldiers, civilians, shepherds and even cattle, adults and infants. They patrol inch by inch the areas where that storm of Milan missiles struck, the most nefarious, those with a confirmed radioactive content. The materials present in the "former warehouse", in the "ecological island" and in the "active powder area" are beating on the carpet. The radiometric measurements go as far as the two hills forbidden to graze, openly intended for "strike arrival areas", in practice where the targets to be blown up with radioactive tracer shots were located. The final report of that monitoring, first the Public Prosecutor and the Judge for Preliminary Investigations then, summarize it in quotation marks and in italics, as if it were the epitaph of that military proscenium: the examinations had revealed the "presence of radioactive contamination of some areas used in the past as landing areas for Milan missiles ".

The radioactive secret

It gets worse. From the documentation seized in the Polygon it emerged that "the leaders of the first Armored Regiment were aware of the presence of radioactive contamination inside the Polygon". It is at that moment that the men of the Prosecutor's Office discover that there are other areas that the CISAM had placed under guard, complete with bans on approach. It is April 2013 when "radiation protection measures are taken for the areas called" Seddas de Crobeddu "and" Perda de Fogu "with concertina for a radius of at least 20 meters from the center of the floats (transformed into targets for Milan missiles).

Fenced off the areas at the Torio

Without anything being known outside of that fence from Fort Knox, which from Teulada runs along Porto Pino, in the municipality of Sant'Anna Arresi, on August 8, 2013, with the beach a stone's throw full of bathers, the Command of the Poligono provides for the absolute prohibition for anyone to approach seven other areas inside the NATO garrison in Sardinia. "The ban on access and removal of metal material" is imposed "on Guardia S'Arena, Guardia Bracaxius, Guardia Nadali, Guardia Zaffaraneddu, Nuraghe Don Antiogu, Punta de sa Cruxi and Porto Cogolidos". Virtually everywhere. In dozens of areas of the polygon the Milan missiles had been exploded with impunity, those with Thorium, a radioactive substance considered much more dangerous than Uranium itself. Investigators write: in the area of Seddas de Crobeddu and in that of Perda Rosa, 14 fragments of the Milan missile tracers were found, containing part of the Torio bezel, all radioactive results. The report is in the device of the Judge for Preliminary Investigations: "Between December 2013 and October 2014 fragments were found in some areas of the Polygon (Braccaxius, Seddas de Crobeddu, Perda Rosa, Porto Cogolidos) and metals attributable to the aforementioned weapon system on which gamma radiation measurements above the natural background were detected ". No wonder there is such a large displacement of remnants of the "radioactive" missile.

Missiles for 200 million

Moreover, according to the Prosecutor's Office, only in the Teulada polygon of those anti-tank missiles, similar to those that are being sent to Ukraine to face the Russian advance, were exploded, in the period from 2008 to 2016, the beauty, becomes to say, of 11,785. According to a confidential analysis by the Ministry of Defense, the cost of Milan missiles is discounted at 413 thousand euros for each weapon system that includes a launcher and 24 missiles. The multiplication exceeds two hundred million euros, money that alone would be worth a revival plan for the entire territory. Suffice it to say that the Milan missiles, those under accusation, scattered in every corner of the Teulada base, each contained three grams of radioactive Thorium.

License to pollute

For the Generals, however, all this did not appear to be a problem. It is Alessandra Tedde, the Judge for Preliminary Investigations, who outlines an identikit of irresponsibility. He writes of the forbidden peninsula, the "Delta area" of the Polygon, the extreme tip of southern Sardinia towards Africa: "It has always been the target of all weapon systems used for fire exercises by the personnel of the Italian Armed Forces and the allied foreign forces, (arrival area: mortar and artillery shots, wire-guided missiles, naval fire against the coast, bombing and aerial strafing, for emergency drops for airplanes) ". There is more in the same internal acts of the military base: "With access permanently forbidden to people and vehicles due to the presence of war remnants never subject to reclamation, indeed, of which, according to the same Polygon Regulations, it is not possible , that is, the reclamation is convenient ".

Masters in the house of others

Among the military leaders, writes the Judge, there was "the widespread belief, handed down to the successive subjects in the roles involving government and management of the polygon, and finally uncritically accepted, that the absence of any reclamation was not contrary to the law, on the contrary, that it was a logical consequence of the aforementioned repeated use of the peninsula or that that area belonged to the Defense Administration ». In short, as if to say: we are the masters in our house and we do what we want. This morning the Council Chamber, chaired by Judge Giuseppe Pintori, must decide whether the Generals, those with the real power to decide, Chiefs of Staff in the period from 2009 to 2015, must be tried for "unnamed disaster". According to the accusation, they are responsible for having devastated an area of "rare beauty", that of Capo Teulada. At the Court of Cagliari, from today, at 10.30, room 1, truth and justice are being sought.

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HERE the first part of the investigation

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