However there are suggestions they have arrested the wrong man, in a case of mistaken identity.
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Investigators on Tuesday said they had arrested Mered Medhanie, a 35-year-old Eritrean man thought to be at the heart of the Africa-to-Europe migrant smuggling pipeline.
“This is a demonstration of how little these organizations and their bosses respect human life, the lives of all those desperate people who for various reasons attempt to reach Italy and Europe in the hope of a better life”, said Palermo chief prosecutor Francesco Lo Voi.
In response to the Guardian article, an NCA spokesperson said: “This is a complex multi partner operation and it is too soon to speculate about these claims”.
A woman living in Norway who identified herself as another sister told Newsnight her brother was “completely innocent”.
But unnamed friends of the arrested, quoted by the BBC, said his real name was Mered Tesfamariam.
International Kingpin Mered Medhanie, said to be behind a £1billion trafficking operation, was nabbed after British spooks traced him to a filthy bolthole in Sudan’s capital Khartoum.
Sweden-based Eritrean broadcaster Meron Estefaros who had interviewed the actual suspect Mered by telephone earlier reportedly said, “I have nearly 400 people writing to me saying: I know this guy, he grew up with me”.
He said the NCA is “liaising with our partners”, adding that the organisation is confident in its intelligence gathering process.
In one conversation intercepted by Italian authorities he could be heard laughing about the fatal overloading of migrant ships.
High ranking security officials from the Sudanese police and other security apparatuses involved in the operation Thursday held a meeting with the British and Italian Ambassadors to Khartoum to discuss the issue.
Medhanie was arrested Wednesday as the leader of an worldwide smuggling network that ushered migrants across the Mediterranean Sea to Europe.
The taps followed smugglers who were constantly on the move between Eritrea, Ethiopia, Libya, Sudan, the UAE and Europe.
“I believe they have the wrong person”.
It is also believed he is responsible for the October 2013 shipwreck off the Lampedusa coast in which more than 300 asylum seekers, mostly from Eritrea, drowned in sight of the Italian Island.
Prosecutors said the man was recorded saying to have a brother in Netherlands, and a wife and son in Sweden.
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Prosecutor Maurizio Scalia said Mered is not only being investigated for aiding undocumented migration dating from 2012, but also on possible charges related to banking fraud for the transfer of funds to pay for the people smuggling. The U.N. refugee agency has encouraged European countries to do more to share the burden of the global community in the migrant crisis.
