British and Italian police are rushing to establish whether they have caught the wrong person in a much-hyped anti-trafficking operation that reportedly led to the capture of one of the world’s most-wanted people smugglers.
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Last year, authorities identified Mered as a prime suspect along with Ethiopian-born Ermias Ghermay, who remains at large, in the transport of refugees and migrants from sub-Saharan Africa via lawless Libya and across the Mediterranean to Europe.
But Francesco Lo Voi, the chief prosecutor in the Italian city of Palermo, now says “we are carrying out the necessary checks”.
The Sudanese police carried out the arrest after the British authorities tracked him to an address in the El Diem area of Khartoum, the British National Crime Agency said.
One of Kidane’s sisters who lives in Norway said her brother was living a “normal” life in Sudan and had nothing to do with human smuggling.
Medhane Yehdego Mered, a 35-year-old Eritrean, was flown to Rome overnight from Sudan, where he was arrested two weeks ago.
“The arrest was only possible thanks to substantial cooperation between the Sudanese National Police and the NCA, together with the Palermo Prosecutors”.
The boat was packed with more than 500 people.
Mered is said to be one of the four most important trafficking organization leaders in North Africa.
Italian prosecutors have also revealed Medhanie was recorded on mobile phone taps in 2013 laughing about the fatal overloading of migrant ships when 359 migrants drowned off the Lampedusa in 2013.
Other charges include the smuggling of migrants relating to numerous arrivals of boats in Sicily, with aggravating circumstances of the number of smuggled people, inhuman treatment and risk to the life of migrants.
They say that Mered’s arrest represents a significant breakthrough: he is the first suspected trafficker to be arrested in and extradited from Africa.
Wiretaps of Mered’s conversations revealed he was in contact with traffickers in northern Europe, particularly in the Netherlands and Scandinavia, and held a “senior position in a criminal network operating in several continents”, according to Italian police.
Guardian interviews with Eritrean refugees suggest Sudanese drivers carry Eritreans to the Libyan border, where they are crammed into trucks driven by Libyan smugglers and taken on a hellish journey to north-eastern Libya.
Italian police images of the captured “kingpin” have prompted an outcry that the suspect in custody is an innocent man with a different name.
Authorities have long criticized human smugglers who help migrants – many of whom die at sea – attempting to reach Europe.
On Wednesday, rescuers were hard at work off Libya, pulling at least 800 people to safety. He does not deal directly with people who want to migrate.
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“Last night they were beating us with iron sticks”. However, many other smuggling networks based on the continent continue to operate.
