was delayed in Bologna by almost three hours, a bomb's timer may have been set to actually cause an explosion at the Palermo airport, or on a further flight of the same plane. The 1990 judicial inquiry was supported by a technical commission, led by independent investigator Frank Taylor. The technical commission's report concluded that an explosion in the rear toilet, and not a missile strike, was the only conclusion supported by the wreckage analysis. A test explosion in a DC-9 lavatory had shown the resulting deformation in the surrounding structure to be almost identical to that of the incident aircraft. The technical commission's report was criticised in the Italian media by Corriere della Sera and La Repubblica. In particular it was stated that there was no evidence of explosive residue, per tests performed in 1994 by the Defence Research Agency in the United Kingdom. Missile strike during military operation Parts of the Italian media alleged that the aircraft was shot down during a dogfight involving Libyan, United States, French and Italian Air Force fighters in an assassination attempt by NATO members on an important Libyan politician, perhaps even Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi, who was flying in the same airspace that evening. This version was supported in 1999 by Judge Rosario Priore, who said in his concluding report that his investigation had been deliberately obstructed by the Italian military and members of the secret service, in compliance with NATO requests. According to the Italian media, documents from the archives of the Libyan secret service passed on to Human Rights Watch after the fall of Tripoli show that Flight 870 and a Libyan MiG were attacked by two French jets. On 18 July 1980, 21 days after the Itavia Flight 870 incident, a Libyan MiG-23MS is said to have crashed in the Sila Mountains in Castelsilano, Calabria, southern Italy. According to Libyan Air Force sources, the pilot was victim of hypoxia. As his aircraft's autopilot was activated, it just kept flying straight and level until running out of fuel, and eventually crashed in the Sila Mountains. Conspiracy theories Several conspiracy theories explaining the disaster persist. For example, the vessel that carried out the search for debris on the ocean floor was French, but only US officials had access to the aircraft parts they found. Several radar reports were erased and several Italian generals were indicted 20 years later for obstruction of