PHOTO BY: GABRIELE RUGGIERI

Mered case, the word to the accused's sister 
"He is my brother, not a trafficker of men"

" The person sitting here is Medhanie Tesfamariam Berhe and he's my brother." Begin with these words the testimony of Hiwet Tesfamariam Behre , the woman of Eritrean origins who yesterday in front of the second section of the assize court in Palermo denied that the young prisoner from June 2016 to Pagliarelli is the trafficker of men Medhanie Yehdego Mered . He would be his half-brother, in fact share the same father but have different mothers. The two, however, have lived together for years. Until she moved to Norway in 2011 , where she still lives today. From that moment the contacts with Medhanie are only telephone.

"I heard that at the end of 2014 he went to Ethiopia , he contacted me on Facebook to tell me, and then another sister who also lived in Ethiopia at that time, Semhar , confirmed it to me." There are in all seven, between brothers and sisters, four females and three males. "Medhanie was in Sudan in 2015 , it's always he who told me. At the beginning, however - the woman continues - she did not have a telephone and used one of a friend with whom she lived, only after she had one of her own and with that we communicated through social media and Viber. I know he lived in Khartoum , but I do not remember where I was, I knew he lived in the center with his friends, those he grew up in Eritrea. "

"I know he did not work." Above all, a brother and a sister are transferred to the United States and other relatives. " Medhanie is not married and has no children, " says the sister of the man in prison, and at this point he brings Lydia Tesfu into the game , with whom he has only had telephone contact, the two women have never met. " I only met her after my brother's arrest, was the wife of Medhanie Yehdego Mered the trafficker - he says -. I got to talk to Lydia about this whole affair, she confirmed that her child's father is not my brother Medhanie Tesfamariam Behre, but Medhanie Mered. She also told me that she was heard by the Italian police, who explained who her husband was and to whom he also showed a picture of him ».

Hiwit asks Lydia Tesfu to subject the child to DNA testing , but she refuses: "When I asked her to take the test she told me that she could not do it because the police had not asked her to do this kind of exam . I do not know exactly if they had been policemen or civilians with her, she told me only that they had come from Italy and had asked her about her husband, and this meeting would have happened where she lived in Sweden. "I have to do law, because people came from the law" , he insisted. A passage, this is reported by the sister of the accused, remained hazy, because of the few details known by the woman on this imaginary meeting between the wife of the trafficker and these "lawyers" who came to ask questions from Italy.

An episode on which even the accusation, now, hopes to be able to clarify with subsequent witnesses. Meanwhile, for the next hearing, scheduled for May, the deposition of the man detained for almost two years and who has always declared to be the victim of a clamorous mistake in person is awaited .