Precis

Sardinia is an island cut in two. Along the white beach-studded Costa Smeralda, a magnet for the rich and famous, a villa can fetch close to $150 million.

“That house is owned by the head of Volkswagen,” says realtor Lorenzo Camillo as he takes reporter Emma Alberici for a sail on his yacht. “Ah there we are - there’s the famous Berlusconi villa.”

But more than a third of Sardinia – including much of its waters – is off limits to locals and visitors, whatever their celebrity. This area is controlled by the Italian military, rented out for some of the world’s biggest war games and home to Europe’s biggest bomb test site.

This has many locals riled. “Islands, little islands have disappeared, erased by missiles shot from the land, the sky and the sea,” says former Sardinian president Mauro Pili.

Pili has also recorded the destruction of some of Sardinia’s unique nuraghe - turret-like stone Bronze Age structures built some 3500 years ago – by test bombs.

But it’s not cultural vandalism or restricted movement that most concerns Sardinians. In areas near the test sites, there have been high rates of cancers, birth defects and early death.

Giancarlo Piras recalls what the doctor said when his son Francesco, who had served as a soldier at a bombing range, got pancreatic cancer at age 27: “By any chance has your son been in contact with radioactive material?”

Children were born with deformities including missing limbs. In one village in one year, one in four new born babies had some kind of defect. Sheep grazing on the test sites gave birth to grotesquely twisted lambs. Their shepherds too had phenomenally high rates of cancer.

Tissue samples from man and beast showed high levels of a highly toxic material used in many bomb tests. “The longer they lived in the area, the higher the quantity,” a nuclear physicist tells Alberici.

As public pressure grew for a full accounting, the military pushed back. “If they didn’t want us to see something they wouldn’t show it to us. They feared we could find something unusual,” says an MP who headed a parliamentary inquiry.

Generals went on the front foot, blaming people’s illnesses on close inbreeding.  With much fanfare, they announced a scientific inquiry.  But as Alberici reports, evidence shows they nobbled it.

GFX:  Foreign Correspondent

Music

00:00

Fade up from black

00:03

Drone shots of yacht. GFX:
Secret Sardinia

00:08

GFX: Sardinia, Italy

00:12

Alberici on yacht. GFX:
Reporter:  Emma Alberici

00:16

EMMA ALBERICI: [on a sailing boat] “The Costa Smeralda is a magnet for the rich and famous.  It hosts the most beautiful beaches in all of Europe,

00:20

Alberici to camera on yacht

but I’ve come here to investigate a darker side – the cover ups, the secrets, the mystery illnesses that have blighted life on this glorious island for decades”.

00:29

Music

00:41

Alberici on yacht with Lorenzo

“That’s an amazing place”.

LORENZO CAMILLO: “Yes, that’s built on the Punta Volpe it's called here. It belonged to the President of Volkswagen, Hahn”.

00:44

Views of luxury homes from yacht

EMMA ALBERICI:  Sailing with Australian real estate broker Lorenzo Camillo and his daughter Lisa, it’s not hard to see what draws people to this place.  Former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was one of the first to invest here.

LORENZO CAMILLO: “There we are, there’s the famous Berlusconi Villa.  A very large house with an enormous property”.

00:53

Alberici on yacht with Lorenzo looking at properties

EMMA ALBERICI: “To the extent that there is such a thing as a typical villa along the Costa Smeralda, what would… what would it cost?”

01:19

LORENZO CAMILLO: “Well, entry level is probably around 20 million upwards”.

EMMA ALBERICI: “Twenty million euros!”

LORENZO CAMILLO: “Twenty million euros upwards, twenty, thirty, forty”.

EMMA ALBERICI: “Now there’s affordable property”.

LORENZO CAMILLO: “Up to over a hundred also there’s been a sale”.

EMMA ALBERICI: “Wow!”

LORENZO CAMILLO: "Because they are very unique properties."

01:26

Drone shots over beach

EMMA ALBERICI:  The wealth of the north is a stark contrast to other parts of the island where visitors are forbidden. 

01:41

Military war games on beach

Music

01:48

GFX: Map. Italy/Sardinia

EMMA ALBERICI:   Sardinia plays host to some of the world’s most elaborate war games, like this one in 2015. 

01:52

Archival. “Trident Juncture” footage

“Trident Juncture” was one of NATO’s biggest exercises.  Dozens of countries were involved.  The military exclusion

02:00

GFX: Map. Sardinia showing military exclusion zones

zones cover more than a third of Sardinia’s land, sea and air.  Rome

02:14

Military craft on beach

is reported to be making one and a half million dollars a day renting out this space to foreign forces and weapons manufacturers.

02:23

Drone shot. Beach. Yacht

LISA CAMILLO: “When I was younger,

02:34

Lisa Camillo interview

this for me of course was always a paradise and I never noticed that actually, there were submarines passing by”.

EMMA ALBERICI:  Lisa Camillo recently returned to

02:37

Lisa and Alberici on yacht

Sardinia after being away almost two decades.  She was shocked by what she saw, so she made a film to raise awareness and is campaigning to rid the island of its military bases.

LISA CAMILLO: “I never realised

02:47

the extent or the gravity of the situation and also we didn’t have internet back then so everything was even more hidden”.

03:04

Alberici driving to Teulada

Music

03:11

GFX: Map Sardinia/Teulada

EMMA ALBERICI:  Down south in Teulada, the beaches are just as stunning, but they’re mostly inaccessible. 

03:18

Drone shots over Teulada beach

This isn’t a playground for the rich. 

03:26

Marica fishing boat

The Marica family have been fishing in these waters for generations.

03:31

Marica family catching octopus

LUCIANO MARICA: “This spot here is the forbidden zone where we’re not allowed to work. 

03:43

Alberici on boat with Luciano

It’s 200 metres from Point Menga.  Point Menga is the one you can see looking out to Cape Teulada”.

EMMA ALBERICI: “So you’re saying 200 metres in that direction you can’t go.  What happens if you do go there?”

LUCIANO MARICA: “The first time we go there it’s a 4000 euro fine”.

03:47

EMMA ALBERICI: “Four thousand!  Have you ever been fined?”

LUCIANO MARICA: “Ehh!  Several times!”

04:06

Drone shot. Marica fishing boat

Music

04:11

Marica family boat

EMMA ALBERICI: The Italian Ministry of Defence has deemed vast areas of the sea around Sardinia off limits.

04:17

Luciano points out soldier watching his boat

LUCIANO MARICA: “Sitting on the cement there…”

EMMA ALBERICI: “He said they’re sitting there watching he said”.

LUCIANO MARICA: “There they are.  There’s a look-out there. 

04:27

They put a soldier there to watch to ensure we don’t cross the boundary”.

EMMA ALBERICI: “Oh so you can see them now?”

LUCIANO MARICA: “Yes, you can see them. 

04:34

They’ll call and…”

EMMA ALBERICI: “There are two members of the military up there watching us”.

04:43

Military installation.

Music

04:47

Alberici driving past installations

EMMA ALBERICI:  Most of the military operations on Sardinia have been kept secret since 1951. They’re the result of an arrangement struck with NATO countries after the Second World War.

04:54

Mauro Pili watches video footage with Alberici

MAURO PILI: “… the inspector in charge of radioactivity there and this is the commander of the Teulada base”.

EMMA ALBERICI:  Mauro Pili has made it his life’s mission to bust open this wall of silence.  He was once the political leader of Sardinia,

05:07

but even then he couldn’t get access to see what was going on at the military bases.

05:24

Mauro Pili did eventually get into the Teulada military site, but only after he was elected to the federal parliament in Rome.  He was told there would be strictly no filming allowed.

MAURO PILI: “Obviously these are pictures I filmed without authorisation. 

05:32

I absolutely had the right to film, but they said I wasn’t allowed.  So I smuggled my camera in as you can see”.

05:51

Firing of MILAN missiles

EMMA ALBERICI:  Despite the secrecy, bits of information have started to leak out.  In 2017, Sardinian health authorities confirmed 4,200 French-made MILAN missiles arrived on the island over the twenty years to 2003.  Some were fired at Teulada.

05:58

MAURO PILI: “This”, he says, “this is the MILAN missile,

06:32

Alberici and Mauro look at footage

the residue from the thorium of the MILAN missile”.

EMMA ALBERICI: “That they had exploded?”

06:35

MAURO PILI: “Yes, the radioactive imager from the MILAN missile”.

EMMA ALBERICI: The guidance systems of these MILAN missiles each carry three grams of radioactive thorium.  Inhaling thorium dust increases the risk of lung and pancreatic cancer.

06:40

Archive. MILAN missile firing

MAURO PILI: “Islands have vanished.  Little islands in the middle of the sea have been wiped out by missiles.  Missiles shot from land, from the air and from the sea itself. 

07:02

Mauro 100%

The whole morphology of the landscape has changed”.

07:13

Funeral service in Teulada

EMMA ALBERICI: The main concern for Sardinians living close to the firing ranges, isn’t about damage to the land or restricted access – they’re worried that bomb residue might be killing them.  Today, Teulada is saying goodbye to another of its citizens, fifty-nine-year-old Mario Troga.  As a young man he worked at the firing range.  He died of lung cancer but he wasn’t a smoker.  Many of the people gathered here have been touched by cancer.

07:16

Funeral procession

GUILIO ANGIONI: “My mother-in-law died of cancer.  They cut my father-in-law’s leg off because it was cancerous.  My father died. 

07:58

Guilio interview

My sister died young of lung cancer.  My wife is still alive, but she has several cancers.  She’s been operated on three times – twice for her breasts and once for her lung.  My wife now has half a left lung. She’s still alive but she’s been through so much”.

08:07

Alberici with Guilio and friend

EMMA ALBERICI:  Guilio Angioni and his friends blame the Italian defence force for their suffering.

08:25

ERICINA LAI: “My husband was 65.  It was cancer.  Within a month this devastating cancer took him away”.

08:31

EMMA ALBERICI: “And he worked nearby?”

ERICINA LAI: “When my husband was young he worked at the military base”.

08:37

Plane flies overhead at Abbondia’s

08:41

Abbondia’s animals and garden

EMMA ALBERICI: The Italian military has always denied doing anything to hurt the people, the land, or the animals of Sardinia. 

08:45

Abbondia shows photos

Abbondia Piras and her husband Giancarlo have been fighting the military through the courts for ten years.

08:56

ABBONDIA PIRAS: “They should have protected him, kept him safe. 

09:06

Here’s Francesco”.

EMMA ALBERICI: “He has a beautiful smile”.

09:10

ABBONDIA PIRAS: “He liked playing music.  Here he is with a little girlfriend – his first girlfriend”.

09:19

EMMA ALBERICI:  Francesco Piras did his

09:28

Abbondia makes coffee

national service at Teulada in the late nineties.  He took part in military exercises and his parents say

09:31

Spent missile shells

he was ordered to pick up old shells with his bare hands.  A few years later, at the age of 27, he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. 

09:38

Alberici with Abbondia and Giancarlo

His parents blame the armed forces.

09:53

Framed photo of Francesco

“Could it have been something else?”

09:56

Giancarlo interview

GIANCARLO PIRAS: “No, absolutely not.  Because the final remarks of his medial report said that it was impossible that someone living a normal lifestyle in contact with ordinary things, it would be impossible for that person to have all that rubbish in their liver”.

09:59

GFX:  Francesco's liver tissue

EMMA ALBERICI: “This is the rubbish Giancarlo says built up in his son’s liver.  They’re particles so small they can quickly pass through your lungs and into your body. 

10:19

Gatti analysing tissue

Biomedical engineer Antonietta Gatti analysed Francesco’s liver tissue.  She found nanoparticles of seven different metals in the tumour, including chromium, tungsten and titanium.  There’s no metals industry around but these are all used by the arms industry. Dr Gatti believes Francesco was contaminated by dust from a big explosion.

10:33

Gatti interview

DR ANTONIETTA GATTI: “You find the pollution is closely related to what was combusted.  That is the fundamental point”.

11:10

Gatti analysing tissue

EMMA ALBERICI: The science of nanoparticles is still new, but the World Health Organisation says early signs show that fine material may be harmful to public health.  The WHO is encouraging further research.  In the meantime, it advises those at risk of industrial exposure to nanoparticles to exercise caution. Dr Gatti has consulted to four parliamentary inquiries that looked into the activities of the Italian defence force.

11:20

Gatti interview

DR ANTONIETTA GATTI: “We received three million euros (from the EU) in a partnership with 11 laboratories, all highly qualified at the European level.  We verified that nanoparticles can penetrate cells”.

11:55

Photos of Francesco

ABBONDIA PIRAS: “It was three months of intense pain. 

12:18

Abbondia interview

Physical pain.  Mental pain. Because of what he knew. So… death awaits us.  It can happen.  But the pain that he had in those three months who could have believed? You can’t imagine how much he suffered”.

12:24

Driving to Escalaplano

Music

12:52

GFX: Map showing route Teulada to Quirra

EMMA ALBERICI: It’s a two hour drive heading north out of Teulada to the Quirra bombing range.

12:55

Driving to Escalaplano

This is the scene of tragic health stories and mysterious birth defects that have come to be dubbed “The Quirra syndrome”. 

13:02

Shepherd with flock

For many here life is still slow and traditional,

13:18

Escalaplano township

but at towns like Escalaplano, perched on the edge of the firing range, passions are inflamed.

MAURO PILI: “Some 186 deaths in Quirra the

13:24

Mauro Pili interview

ones that are known”.

EMMA ALBERICI: “Not only soldiers?”

MAURO PILI: “Not only soldiers, but the majority of them had worked inside Quirra”.

13:35

Quirra military test site

13:46

EMMA ALBERICI: Quirra is the biggest military test site in Europe. It’s used by NATO countries as well as Israel. 

13:50

Houses adjoining test site

Those living nearby have known much tragedy.

14:02

Alberici walks through t own with Dr Gatti

Dr Gatti has become an advocate for some of the people of Quirra.

14:09

Maria Theresa already had ten healthy children when her last child arrived in 1988.  The baby girl was born so severely deformed,

14:24

Maria Theresa stokes fire

her mother has never let her photo be seen. The townsfolk made cruel remarks.

14:37

Alberici with Maria Theresa and Dr Gatti

MARIA THERESE FARCI: “You could not erase what they said even if you could use ammonia or bleach”.

14:45

EMMA ALBERICI:  She was baptised Maria Grazia. She was blind and couldn’t move or speak.

14:51

MARIA THERESE FACI: “It was enough to gently stroke her face but without speaking… “Ahh… Ahh”.  It was such a… all those who knew Maria Grazia have not forgotten her, because she really remains inside you”.

14:58

Escalaplano cemetery

Music

15:17

EMMA ALBERICI:  Escalaplano cemetery is a sad testament.  One in four of the children born in the same year as Maria Grazia had some kind of deformity.

15:24

MARIA THERESE FACI: “Some people, they never…

15:37

Alberici with Maria Theresa and Dr Gatti

They would never talk about it.  Many of them. Some even had abortions”.

15:41

Alberici in cemetery

EMMA ALBERICI:  Maria Grazia lived to 25 with tireless daily care.

15:49

Maria Theresa reads from diary

Her last moments recorded in her mother’s diary.

MARIA THERESE FACI: “Around 10.30 a.m.… wait, my legs are shaking. It happens when I get very agitated. 

16:00

Basically, she died in my arms.  She died in my arms.  There was nothing we could do to prevent it. My whole world collapsed.  I knew that Maria Grazia was sick, but I wasn’t ready.  No, I wasn’t ready”.

16:16

Alberici with Gianpiero Scanu

EMMA ALBERICI: Gianpiero Scanu has tried to hold the military to account. He led a two-year parliamentary inquiry.  His committee met fierce resistance from the chiefs of defence.

16:42

Gianpiero interview

GIANPIERO SCANU: “If they didn’t want us to see certain things, they didn’t let us see them.  They could do whatever they wanted at the firing ranges because they weren’t monitored at all. You couldn’t even stick your nose in to try to understand what was going on”.

16:59

Alberici on street to camera

EMMA ALBERICI: “We’ve made repeated attempts to speak to the military during our research for this story but we’ve been blocked at every turn. 

17:21

Alberici holds Ministry of Defence memo

Now this document dated 2011 has come our way. It’s a confidential Ministry of Defence memo instructing military officials on how to respond to questions about the health and environmental conditions in and around the bombing sites. What stands out is what they’re told to say about birth defects.  They’re told to explain it away with a shocking allegation, that children born with deformities are the result of inbreeding”.

17:29

Molteni on Swiss TV news.

GENERAL FABIO MOLTENI: “No, they started doing genetic studies… But they don’t want to tell you about that”.

EMMA ALBERICI:  This is General Fabio Molteni, a former head of the Quirra base.  He’s caught on Swiss TV delivering that key message.

GENERAL FABIO MOLTENI: “They are all relatives, relatives.  They marry between cousins, brothers, one another. But you can’t say it, or you’ll offend the Sardinians”.

EMMA ALBERICI: There’s no evidence to support that claim. 

18:03

Military film. Ordnance disposal

The children born with disabilities were conceived in the late '80s when old munitions, bombs and rockets were being routinely disposed of at Quirra.  They were blown up in a pit, twenty metres deep and forty metres wide.

18:30

Dr Gatti, Maria Theresa and Alberici

“Did you see it?”

MARIA THERESA FACI: “Yes and I was not the only one.  Everybody saw it”.

EMMA ALBERICI: “What was it like?”

MARIA THERESA FACI: “The dust was red.  Not black. It was red”.

19:02

File footage. Rocket tests. Explosions, smoke

EMMA ALBERICI:  For decades, dust from explosions and tests has rained down on the towns and the grazing fields of the firing range.  Exactly what was in them, no one knows. 

19:13

Dawn. Florence

Music

19:37

EMMA ALBERICI:  In the early 2000s, local doctors saw a spike in the number of unusual cancers in their patients.  At the same time, over in Florence,

19:43

Domenico into house, sits at computer

military pilot Domenico Leggiero was raising his concerns. He’d seen a high incidence of cancers among fellow soldiers returning from Kosovo where they’d been exposed to depleted uranium.

19:56

DOMENICO LEGGIERO: “Once we started discovering what was happening in areas of international operations, it was natural to consider Sardinia as well.  Because again, the amount of ammunition exploded

20:12

Domenico 100%

and the amount of training and military exercises that were carried out, and still are, in Sardinian ranges are nothing less than the situation of an actual theatre of warfare”.

20:24

File footage. Conducting soil tests

EMMA ALBERICI: The Italian military felt the pressure.  Depleted uranium is mildly radioactive and long suspected of causing cancer and birth defects.  It’s used to help missiles penetrate heavy armour. 

20:39

At Quirra, scientist Francesco Riccobono was flown in by the Ministry of Defence to do some soil tests in front of a swarm of local media.

21:00

Ricci at press conference

COLONEL PAOLO RICCI: [address to media 2002] “It’s conventional weapons testing here.  There is absolutely no testing of nuclear weapons, and nothing peculiar, especially nothing containing depleted uranium because we absolutely don’t use it”.

21:12

EMMA ALBERICI: Francesco Riccobono didn’t find any depleted uranium, keeping quiet about the possible presence of thorium, defence declared the firing range clear.

21:22

Domenico interview

DOMENICO LEGGIERO: “The Italians do not have equipment to make uranium weapons.  They have never shot such weapons.  True.  But the firing ranges of Sardinia are international firing ranges.  When a NATO country asks to use a range it is also bound not to disclose what is used there.  It’s an issue of confidentiality and national security”.

21:35

Video footage of deformed lambs

FARMER:  “How terrible, how terrible!”

EMMA ALBERICI: Then in 2010, events took a shocking turn.  The photos you’re about to see are disturbing.

21:56

Photos. Deformed lambs

A lamb born with one eye.  Others with deformities the likes and severity of which scientists and public health experts had never seen before.

22:10

Mellis interview

GIORGIO MELLIS: “Lambs were born with eyes in the back of their heads.  The eyes were at the back inside the ears.  I had never seen anything like it.  A farmer told me when I said to him “What’s going on?” He said, “I was too scared to enter the barn in the mornings, I didn’t want to see those deformed little goats.  They were monstrosities you didn’t want to see”.

22:28

Goats on hillside

EMMA ALBERICI: Vet Giorgio Mellis co-wrote a report for the district health authority, assessing the risks posed by activities at the bombing range.  Remarkably, the team of scientists found 65% of the shepherds living close to the range had cancers.

GIORGIO MELLIS: “It was the only place in the world

23:03

Mellis interview

where farmers lived inside a bombing range and animals grazed in the zone where they carried out these explosions, these bombings, all the exercises.  We were very concerned for the people who were there who ate this food.  So we informed all the authorities so that an in-depth investigation would take place”.

23:28

Exhumation at Escalaplano cemetery

EMMA ALBERICI:  Immediately, a formal police investigation was launched.  The court ordered the exhumation of 18 shepherds who’d died in the 20 years up to 2010.  Their bones were shipped here to Italy’s north and examined at two universities.  Nuclear Physicist, Evandro Lodi Rizzini, led some of that research.

24:05

Alberici and Rizzini with university chemical analyses

EVANDRO LODI RIZZINI: “The results from multiple analyses conducted at Brescia and Pavia showed the presence in around 10 case, actually 11,

24:36

Rizzini interview

of elevated quantities of uranium but most of all thorium”.

24:52

Exhumation at Escalaplano cemetery

EMMA ALBERICI:  Those 11 shepherds with high levels of thorium in their bones had all lived close to the firing range.

25:03

EVANDRO LODI RIZZINI: “The longer someone lived in that area the higher the quantities of thorium detected.

25:13

GVs Lanusei

Music

25:21

EMMA ALBERICI:  In the regional capital, Lanusei, the Chief Prosecutor called a meeting with the scientist

25:32

Re-enactment. Questioning of Riccobono

who’d done the soil testing for the military.  Why hadn’t research Francesco Riccobono found any uranium or the much more dangerous thorium in the soil at Quirra?  While he was questioned upstairs, outside police opened his car and hid a listening device inside.  As he drove back to the airport, the bug picked up his conversation with an assistant.  He’d been interrogated for leaving thorium out of his report and he was angry with the military.

25:37

Re-enactment. Secret recording

SECRET POLICE RECORDING: “You’re the ones who fucking commissioned us to do this work.  If you thought that was important if you’re honest, you say to me hey, make sure to include it because it’s important”.

26:20

Reprise of Ricci at press conference. Riccobono watching

EMMA ALBERICI:  Francesco Riccobono’s university received a $2.4 million dollar government grant to carry out its work.  He was later acquitted of charges that he was involved in a cover up.  Mauro Pili is still convinced of foul play.

MAURO PILI: “It was all part of this great government farce.

26:31

Pili interview

The idea was to gag anyone who began to name the dangers present at that place in the environment”.

26:54

Court room footage

EMMA ALBERICI: Eight former commanders at Quirra are now on trial, charged with breaching their duty of care for the health and safety of soldiers and civilians. 

27:06

Reprise of Molteni Swiss. TV footage

One of them is Fabio Molteni, infamously caught on film claiming Sardinians are inbred. 

27:21

Reprise. Ricci press conference

Another is Paolo Ricci who had declared Quirra uranium free.

27:30

Scanu delivers finding

After two decades and three previous inconclusive inquiries, last year Gianpiero Scanu’s committee made a bold finding.

GIANPIERO SCANU: “The causal link between the exposure to depleted uranium and diseases suffered by the military has been confirmed at a judicial level.  This is a milestone”.

27:36

EMMA ALBERICI: For the first time, nanoparticles of depleted uranium were found to play a role in the possible development of tumours.

28:05

Montage. Missiles

Crucially, thorium when inhaled or ingested, was found to be five times more dangerous than depleted uranium.  The Scanu Report was dismissed by the Italian defence force.

28:17

Scanu interview

GIANPIERO SCANU: “I do believe that in the final report of the commission I chaired the truth was finally disclosed”.

28:33

EMMA ALBERICI: But after all that work by the commission, a new law to monitor the health of soldiers was blocked by the upper house in Rome.

28:46

Sunset GVs

For decades, Sardinia has held its secrets close.  It’s been locked in an uncomfortable embrace with the world’s military. In a country mired in debt, defence contracts are a source of income, but also quite possibly the cause of untold misery. After all the inquiries, and with military brass now on trial, for the people of this island paradise, there is a glimmer of hope, that the truth may finally see the light of day.

28:56

Credits:

Reporter
Emma Alberici

Producer
Deborah Richards

Camera
Ron Ekkel

Editor
Lile Judickas

29:39

Edit assistant
Tom Carr

Research
Maddalena Brunetti
Anne Worthington
Lisa Camillo

Graphics
Andres Gomez Isaza

Executive Producer
Matthew Carney

abc.net.au/foreign
© 2019

Out point

29:55