Mystery on the lake. Or mysteries, in the plural: it could be the title of an Agatha Christie novel, it is actually the only way to date to summarize what we know about the sinking of a tourist boat on Sunday, May 28 on Lake Maggiore in northern Italy, in the Milan region.
What we now know for sure is that among the 23 passengers on board (on a boat sized to accommodate 15), four people lost their lives, including two Italian intelligence agents and a former member of Mossad, Israeli intelligence. The fourth victim is a Russian national, she was one of the two crew members of the boat. Their bodies were recovered by firefighters. The twenty surviving passengers were rescued by other boats nearby or were able to swim to shore.
The Goduria, a 16-metre-long vessel, overturned off Lisanza, at the southern end of the lake, after the weather suddenly turned stormy, and the wind quickly picked up.
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What were these intelligence agents doing on board the ship and what really happened? The official version, on the Italian side, evokes a banal birthday dinner mourned by a technical accident... "During the evening of May 28, following a nautical accident caused by a violent downspout, Claudio Alonzi, 62, (...) and Tiziana Barnobi, 53, lost their lives. These two people, belonging to the intelligence, were in the region to participate in a friendly meeting organized on the occasion of the birthday of one of the participants, "said in a statement the Italian security services. The president of the Lombardy region, Attilio Fontana, had deplored Sunday evening a "very serious incident" caused by a "whirlwind".
We learn nothing more from the Israeli side. In a terse statement issued by the prime minister's office, the Mossad said it lamented "the loss of a dear friend, a competent and highly committed agent who has dedicated his life to Israel's security for decades, even after his retirement." The former Israeli agent is referred to only by his cover name, Erez Shimoni. His true identity has not been released.
The boat was a nest of spies
Still, the information that filters in the press gives an increasingly strange look to this birthday dinner. First, the Italian daily La Repubblica understands that there were in fact among the passengers on board, a dozen Israeli intelligence officers in total. Moreover, aviation records reveal that a jet of the Israeli authorities landed in Milan on Monday morning, May 29, just after the tragedy that occurred on Sunday evening, before leaving for Tel Aviv a few hours later...
And in the Israeli press, there is a little more advance on the real reasons that led all these intelligence agents to find themselves on board. According to the Israeli Channel 12 News, the Israeli agent who died in the sinking was not in Italy to quietly enjoy his retirement under the Piedmontese sun, but was participating in an intelligence-sharing operation between Israel and Italy about Iran's unconventional weapons technologies. The dinner, according to the same source, was even to celebrate the success of this operation.
Erez Shimoni takes many of his secrets to the grave. He was buried Thursday in Ashkelon, Israel, during a ceremony under tight security in which many guests participated wearing masks and hats so as not to be identifiable in the images. The day before, Mossad boss David Bernea paid tribute to him in front of his former colleagues in Tel Aviv. For the Israeli 007, dying could not wait any longer.
