SESTO CALENDE, Italy — Black clouds quickly appeared and crept in among sun-seeking revelers on northern Italy's lake, disrupting early afternoon snacks and lakeside strolls.
A weather advisory issued earlier in the day had not foreseen the violence of the storm that stormed the lake, with winds so extreme they sank a ship, killing four of its 23 passengers.
Four people died when a boat with tourists capsized on Lake Maggiore due to strong winds, Italian firefighters reported on May 29, 2023. (Photo by Handout / VIGILI DEL FUOCO / AFP) /
As for the news, Sunday's incident at Lake Maggiore was an unusual tragedy that would normally have attracted fleeting attention.
But in the days that followed, the story gained traction in the Italian media when it emerged that 21 people on the boat were spies or former spies, including 13 from Mossad, Israel's foreign intelligence service, and eight Italians.
Official explanations that they had been celebrating a birthday did nothing to quell the speculative frenzy about their activities.
Two of the dead belonged to the Italian intelligence service, according to a note issued by Italian intelligence, while Israel said another victim had been a retired Mossad operative.
The fourth victim, a Russian woman, had been married to the ship's skipper.
The Italians wondered what all those spies were really doing on a Sunday afternoon sailing on a charter boat called "Good... uria" (a pun on an Italian term for pleasure).
Spy Party
Several media outlets were quick to call the meeting a "spy party."
Some speculated on whether the boat trip through the Alps had been an opportunity to exchange information.
Was it a coincidence that the captain spoke Bulgarian fluently, as some pointed out, and was married to a Russian, Anna Bozhkova?
Would the spies have been exploring the lake for Russian tycoons to invest in the vicinity, as Milanese daily Corriere della Sera claimed on Thursday?
The prosecutor investigating the incident, Massimo De Filippo, and his boss, chief prosecutor Carlo Nocerino, said those questions fell outside the scope of their investigation, which is to determine what caused the ship to capsize and sink.
Carlo Carminati, 60, the skipper, is being investigated on suspicion of negligent homicide, shipwreck and injury to surviving passengers.
"We are not interested in what the passengers were doing," Nocerino said in an interview in his office in Busto Arsizio, in Lombardy, the region that contains the part of the lake where the boat sank.
Nocerino said he had asked the captain of the team trying to bring the boat to the surface to alert him immediately when it was back above water so that he and De Filippo would be the first on board.
By Wednesday afternoon, the boat had been washed ashore but remained submerged after several unsuccessful attempts to bring it to the surface with balloons.
"I don't want there to be any doubt that we haven't taken the investigation to the end," Nocerino said.
The vessel and its contents will be confiscated and brought to justice, he added.
The prosecutor acknowledged media speculation that the government might close the investigation if documents or briefcases were found.
"If we find briefcases, we will confiscate them," Nocerino said dryly.
Adding to the intrigue, it appears that the surviving passengers were pulled from the lake within hours of the accident.
The Mossad sent a plane to return the Israeli survivors home and tried to prevent the publication of details about the incident in Israel, according to two Israeli defense officials.
(Israeli media did not report that the Israeli victim was a Mossad veteran until Wednesday.)
A statement issued by Italian intelligence identifying two of the victims - Claudio Alonzi, 62, and Tiziana Barnobi, 53 - as members of Italian intelligence said they had been in the area "to attend a meeting of coexistence" on the occasion of the birthday of one of the members of the group. A spokesman for the Italian agency said it had nothing to add.
Israeli intelligence services have not officially released the Mossad veteran's real name.
His funeral was held Wednesday in Ashqelon, Israel.
The Mossad issued a statement Wednesday saying that "due to his service in the organization, it will not be possible to give further details about him."
Mossad has lost a dear friend, a dedicated and professional worker who had dedicated his life to the security of the State of Israel for decades, even after his retirement."
The deceased former Mossad agent had belonged to a unit tasked with covert liaison with foreign intelligence services, according to a former senior defense official, who asked not to be named discussing the delicate relations between the spy agencies.
Although he had retired from service in the Mossad, he continued to serve as a reservist for the organization and came to Italy along with his colleagues as part of a cooperative relationship between the Israeli and Italian spy organizations, the former official added.
The Mossad and Italian intelligence cooperate on matters of common interest, such as the war on terror or the collection of information on the Iranian nuclear project, he added.
None of the survivors were carrying identity documents when they testified about the accident to Italian military police officers on Sunday night.
They said they had lost them when the boat capsized, according to prosecutors.
Prosecutors also confirmed that the Italians told investigators they were employees of the presidency of the Council of Ministers, a general government department, while the Israelis said they were part of a government delegation.
Whatever uncertainties surround the case, one thing is certain:
the unexpected violence of the storm on Lake Maggiore on Sunday night.
The civil protection agency of the Lombardy region had issued a Code Yellow — a precaution — for the lake for possible storms that night.
Although all the bulletins had warned of worsening conditions for the area, "it was considered unlikely that such intense phenomena would occur that night," said Paolo Valisa, a meteorologist with a local weather agency.
"You can predict a thunderstorm, but until now we haven't been able to predict its intensity, at least in such a localized area."
Nearby wind speed indicators on the lake indicated gusts of between 42 and 60 km/h, but they could have been even higher where the boat was trapped by a downburst, powerful winds that descend with the cold air of a thunderstorm and spread, he said.
Samuel Panetti and several friends had also been on the lake in their boat on Sunday night and were the first to rescue the survivors of the Buen... uria.
"The weather had been good all day," he said, but when the storm hit, the rain was so thick it was like navigating through a cloud.
"There was a lot of rain and hail, and the wind was moving the boat from left to right," he recalls.
He saw what he first thought was a group of seagulls in the middle of the lake, but as he approached he saw that they were people from the sinking ship, "screaming for help, like children."
He and his friends helped some onto the boat and threw "anything that floated" into the water for others to hold onto.
. Some of the survivors managed to swim to shore.
The two female victims were found trapped inside the rental boat, which sank to a depth of about 15 meters.
A third victim was found at the bottom of the lake, while another was recovered floating.
"It was terrifying to see all those people in the water; It looked like a scene from a movie. I still find it hard to believe it was true," he said.
"If we hadn't been there, I think they would all have died," he said.
Paolo Mazzucchelli, director of public transport of Lake Maggiore, dElisabetta Povoledo and Ronen Bergmanijo that at the time of the accident "the wind speed had increased very quickly in a very short time" and that the storm was "localized and very intense".
"They found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time," he said.
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