A pleasure boat sank on Lake Maggiore in Italy on 28 May, with all the passengers being Italian and Israeli intelligence officers.
According to BBC News, there were 23 people on board: 13 Italian intelligence officers, eight Israeli Mossad agents, Captain Claudio Carminati and his Russian wife Anna Bozhkova (they had no connection to the intelligence services).
Four people drowned as a result: one retired Mossad agent, two Italians and the captain’s wife.
A number of Italian publications speculated that it was a working meeting between employees of the two intelligence services. Why the boat went down is still unclear.
“In a matter of 30 seconds we were at the epicentre of the apocalypse. The boat capsized instantly and we were all in the water,” said the captain, who is now under investigation.
Two of the dead Italians, Tiziana Barboni and Claudio Alonzi, had served in the Italian secret service. The fourth victim, Simoni Erez, was a Mossad officer but had already retired at the time of the tragedy.
In Israel, only on the fourth day after the accident Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed that the dead man on Lake Maggiore was a former Mossad agent. The Italian press says that although the official version of events says the four passengers drowned, no post-mortem examination has been carried out or the results are glossed over.
Interestingly, the boat has not yet been brought ashore, although it is technically possible to do so. Surviving members of the security services disappeared after the incident. The documents of their stay in a local hospital have been confiscated. They also did not return the rented vehicles, just left them at the scene.
