Susan Flory reports: No one will ever know for sure what happened

The jet's pilot, Captain Richard Ashby, was found guilty on Friday of obstruction and conspiracy for deliberately removing a videotape of the flight which might have shown the incident from his aircraft.

His earlier acquittal on manslaughter charges in March provoked outrage in Italy and led to demands that Americans be banned from Nato air bases in Italy.

Ashby, 32, faces up to 10 years in prison when he is sentenced on Monday.

Bereaved relatives who heard the latest verdict at the trial at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina said no-one was being found responsible for causing the deaths. The accident happened when Ashby's EA-6B Prowler severed a ski-lift cable, sending the cable car plunging more than 100 metres to the valley floor near Cavalese in the Italian Alps.

Sindy Renkewitz said it was still not clear who was responsible

"He's convicted for destroying a videotape but not convicted for killing 20 people," said Sindy Renkewitz of Burgstadt, Germany, whose father and sister died in the incident.

"We still don't know who is responsible for what happened. Nobody could give us an answer to this question, so for us this is no end."

Giuseppe Pontrelli, a lawyer for Italians who live near the accident site, said he doubted that the pilot would be given the punishment he deserves.

"We predict that Ashby will be kicked out of the Marines but won't get any jail time.

"Yet again there will be a sentence that has all to do with the internal hierarchy of the American military but nothing to do with the death of 20 innocent people, who remain definitively without justice."

Among the dead were a Polish mother and her son, seven German sports colleagues, five Belgian school friends, two retired Italian shopkeepers, an Austrian concert violinist and railway worker, a Dutch student and the Italian cable car operator.

'I take responsibility'

Ashby said he wanted to do what was right

Ashby offered a conciliatory statement to the jury after the verdict had been read out.

He said: "Personally, I want to do what's right. I take responsibility for what I did or did not do. I wish we would have done things differently."

The videotape was shot from the cockpit of the Prowler during part of the flight by Ashby's navigator, Captain Joseph Schweitzer.

After landing the jet at the Nato air base in Aviano, Ashby removed the video. He testified that he later gave the tape to Schweitzer at the navigator's request. Schweitzer said he later threw it into a bonfire.

The navigator himself earlier pleaded guilty to identical charges over the destruction of the tape and was ordered to be dismissed from the military. Manslaughter charges against him were dropped after Ashby was acquitted in March.

Relatives of the dead were in court for the hearing

Schweitzer said he had destroyed the tape because it contained footage of his smiling face taken before the accident - pictures that he feared would be embarrassing if shown alongside images of the ski-lift tragedy.

Investigators never saw what was on the tape, but Ashby and Schweitzer maintained that it had not contained any incriminating information.

However prosecutors argued that the pair had disposed of the tape to obstruct the investigation. Ashby was accused during the manslaughter trial of flying too low and too fast when his jet sliced through the cable.

Rita Wunderlich of Germany, whose husband was killed in the incident, said the Marines had been protecting their own when Ashby was acquitted of manslaughter.