Extradited 'people smuggler': Doubts grow over identity of man seized in Sudan

 

Image copyright NCA/Polizia di Stato

Image caption Left: An image of the man believed to be Mered Medhanie previously released by the UK National Crime Agency; Right: the man extradited to Italy

Italian prosecutors are investigating whether the wrong man was extradited to Italy in a major operation against people-smuggling.

A man thought to be suspected Eritrean people smuggler Mered Medhanie, 35, was seized in Sudan last month.

Two women said to be sisters of another Eritrean man, Medhanie Tesfarmariam Berhe, 27, say he was arrested instead.

One of them told the BBC of her shock at suddenly seeing photos of her missing brother in custody in Italy.

Investigators say Mered Medhanie, dubbed The General, is responsible for the death of 359 migrants in October 20913.

They drowned when their boat sank off the Italian coast in October 2013.

Medhanie Tesfarmariam Berhe is said to be an asylum seeker who arrived in Sudan last year.

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"I was going crazy": Seghen Tesfarmariam Berhe, said to be sister of Medhanie Tesfarmariam Berhe, speaking to BBC from Khartoum, Sudan

Seghen Tesfarmariam Berhe says this photo shows her with with Medhanie Tesfarmariam Berhe

"He's not Mered Medhanie. He's my younger brother. His name is Medhanie Tesfarmariam Berhe. We have been living here for one year together in Khartoum.

"He is not a human trafficker. He is my brother.
"I called the [Sudanese] police but they said there is no person with that name. I have been searching for him for two weeks. They told me there is nobody with that name in prison. All of a sudden I see him in Italy.
"I have been worried sick. I have been crying the whole two weeks. I did not know if he was alive or dead. His photo… he looks awful. I feel sad to see him like that."

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The man who was extradited was arrested by Sudanese police with the help of the British and Italian authorities, the UK's National Crime Agency (NCA) said.
But Francesco Lo Voi, the chief prosecutor in the Italian city of Palermo, said "the necessary checks" were now being carried out.
"The identification of the suspect, his arrest, his handing over and his extradition to Italy were communicated to us in an official manner by the NCA and the Sudanese authorities through Interpol," he told Italy's Ansa news agency.
The NCA said it was "too soon to speculate" about the claims but added it was "confident in its intelligence-gathering process".
A woman who identifies herself as an older sister, Seghen Tesfarmariam Berhe, told the BBC's Newsnight programme from Khartoum that she had been living with her brother Medhanie Tesfarmariam Berhe in the Sudanese capital for a year before he vanished two weeks ago.
Her brother, she said, had come illegally to Sudan in March 2015 as a refugee after fleeing Eritrea via Ethiopia.
He had been hoping, she said, to join another sister living in the US and to study and work there.

Wrong place, wrong time?

A woman living in Norway who identified herself as another sister told Newsnight her brother was "completely innocent".

Hiwet Tesfamariam Berhe Kidane said she had last spoken to him about three weeks ago and had first learned of his arrest when she saw pictures of him on television and social media.

Images of Medhanie Tesfarmariam Berhe given to the BBC resembled the man in custody                                

Hermon Berhe, who lives in Ethiopia, said he had grown up in Eritrea with the man shown in pictures handed out by Italian police.
"I don't think he has any bone in his body which can involve such kind of things," he said. "He is a loving, friendly and kind person."
And Meron Estefanos, a Swedish-Eritrean journalist who interviewed the real Mered Medhanie in a phone call last year, said: "I called refugees who know the real smuggler and I showed them the picture of what the Italians published and then everybody said, 'No, that's not the smuggler that smuggled us into Europe'.
"I believe they have the wrong person. This is a refugee who happened to be in [the Sudanese capital] Khartoum at the wrong place at the wrong time."
She added that rumours were going around Khartoum that the real Mered Medhanie had been arrested in Sudan but had managed to bribe himself out of jail.
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