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People-smuggling: new photos boost claim that wrong man is on trial in Italy
Source: The Guardian
People-smuggling: new photos boost claim that wrong man is on trial in Italy
Exclusive: Pictures seem to show that man on trial is Medhanie
Tesfamariam Berhe rather than smuggler Medhanie Yehdego Mered
Patrick Kingsley and Lorenzo Tondo
Wednesday 16 November 2016 08.00 GMT
New photographs appear to show one of north Africa’s most wanted people-smugglers celebrating at a family wedding, giving fresh momentum to claims that a man accused of being the smuggler, and set to face trial in Italy this week, is the victim of mistaken identity.
Prosecutors in Sicily will begin a second round of legal proceedings on Wednesday against a man they allege to be Medhanie Yehdego Mered, a 35-year-old Eritrean who is said to be a notorious people-smuggler in north Africa.
An Eritrean man was extradited in June from Sudan, with the help of the British Foreign Office and the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA), in a move that attracted intense media attention at the time. But the family of the extradited man have always maintained that he is in fact 29-year-old Medhanie Tesfamariam Berhe.
Some of the smuggler’s former victims have also testified that the man on trial is not the man who smuggled them and an estimated 13,000 others between Sudan, Libya and southern Europe. One asked to remain anonymous because he fears the real smuggler is still at large in Sudan, and could intimidate his family there.
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Exclusive: Pictures seem to show that man on trial is Medhanie
Tesfamariam Berhe rather than smuggler Medhanie Yehdego Mered
Patrick Kingsley and Lorenzo Tondo
Wednesday 16 November 2016 08.00 GMT
New photographs appear to show one of north Africa’s most wanted people-smugglers celebrating at a family wedding, giving fresh momentum to claims that a man accused of being the smuggler, and set to face trial in Italy this week, is the victim of mistaken identity.
Prosecutors in Sicily will begin a second round of legal proceedings on Wednesday against a man they allege to be Medhanie Yehdego Mered, a 35-year-old Eritrean who is said to be a notorious people-smuggler in north Africa.
An Eritrean man was extradited in June from Sudan, with the help of the British Foreign Office and the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA), in a move that attracted intense media attention at the time. But the family of the extradited man have always maintained that he is in fact 29-year-old Medhanie Tesfamariam Berhe.
Some of the smuggler’s former victims have also testified that the man on trial is not the man who smuggled them and an estimated 13,000 others between Sudan, Libya and southern Europe. One asked to remain anonymous because he fears the real smuggler is still at large in Sudan, and could intimidate his family there.
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/16/people-smuggling-new-photos-boost-claim-that-wrong-man-is-on-trial-in-italy