RaiNews returned, this November 23, to the disappearance of Milena Bianchi in Tunisia, thirty years after the events. The young Italian, aged 21, disappeared on November 23, 1995 while she was on vacation in Nabeul, near Hammamet. Her body was found sixteen months later, in March 1997, buried shallowly not far from where she was last seen.
A young Tunisian was arrested and then sentenced to 20 years in prison, after confessing to the murder before recanting during his first hearing. This version never convinced the family, nor certain Italian observers.
Persistent suspicions
RaiNews recalls that “there remains a reasonable suspicion that he must have covered someone, perhaps a very high-ranking person in the president’s entourage”. Thirty years later, Milena’s family continues to demand the truth and denounces many gray areas in the investigation carried out at the time.
Milena’s mother, Gilda Bianchi, said in 2015, in the columns of Corriere del Venetothat his daughter would have been “sold to the brother of President Ben Ali”. A very serious hypothesis, never supported by public legal evidence, but reaffirmed by the family as a central element of its questions.
The shadow of Moncef Ben Ali
These statements resurface today as the affair of the former president’s younger brother, Habib Ben Ali – known as Moncef – also continues to fuel debate. Convicted in absentia in France in 1992 in the “Couscous Connection” affair, he died in 1996 in Tunis, in circumstances that remained ambiguous. His body was exhumed in 2012 for a new autopsy.
Reactivated by the Italian press, the Milena Bianchi affair once again raises questions about the functioning of Tunisian justice in the 1990s and the obstacles that families faced in obtaining answers.
Thirty years later, Milena’s parents still hope one day to know the truth about what happened to their daughter.
Also read:
