Date: Thursday, 10 May 2018
A Swedish public TV documentary SVT, produced in collaboration with some journalists from the British Guardian, has revealed that human trafficker Medhanie Yehdego Mered, who is believed to be held in an Italian prison, is actually living free in Uganda.
The test was performed thanks to the saliva samples of Mered's 3-year-old son, who lives in Sweden.
The results confirmed that the man detained in Italy is not the famous trafficker, as they continue to support the judges of Palermo.
In July 2016 the Palermo judges announced the capture of the man in Sudan and the following extradition to Italy thanks to the collaboration of the British Foreign Ministry and the National Agency against Crime.
The trafficker, known as "the General", was never actually arrested by European police, as reported by Guardian journalists .
In his place, a 29-year-old refugee was extradited to Italy, Medhanie Tesfamariam Behre. The boy is still in prison in Italy on charges of trafficking in human beings.
The European police know that the real trafficker is still at liberty, but has failed to convince Italian judges to request a new arrest warrant, as reported in the documents collected by Swedish TV SVT.
The reporter Ali Fegan and the Eritrean journalist and activist Meron Estefanos collected testimonies from Ugandan and Eritrean citizens who saw and met Medhanie Yehdego Mered in the capital of Uganda, Kampala.
Before going to the Ugandan city, the reporters identified all the places where the trafficker had been seen. Given the delicacy of their work, Fegan and Estefanos used a hidden camera and were able to document "many testimonies of people claiming that [Mered] lives there".
The investigation on Medhanie began after the sinking of a boat on October 3, 2013 near the island of Lampedusa. 368 migrants had died in the shipwreck.
During the investigation, more than 20 thousand calls were intercepted and listened to and in June 2016 the Palermo judges announced the capture of the trafficker, describing it as "the arrest of the year".
From the beginning, however, doubts have been raised about the identity of the accused. Many of Mered's victims said that the man in prison was not the right one.
In reality it is an Eritrean refugee, as declared by the man's family.
Also some Eritrean employees of an NGO based in Kampala confirm that the real trafficker lives in the Ugandan capital, according to the investigations they themselves carried out. The Guardian journalists report it .
The British newspaper reporters asked some people who had met Mered because they had not reported him.
"For many Eritreans [Mered] is a necessity. It's an unpleasant situation, but it helps them escape from worse conditions living at home, "one of the interviewees answered.
Others have not reported the man for fear of retaliation and because they consider him too rich and influential to be arrested.
Mered's wife lives in Sweden and has repeatedly confirmed to the European authorities that the man arrested in Italy is not her husband. According to Swedish TV SVT , the Swedish police were aware of the mistake for 18 months.
Behre's mother, still in prison in Italy on charges of trafficking in human beings, went to Palermo in October 2017 for a DNA test.
Shortly after the disclosure of his photographs, friends and relatives had told the authorities of the supposed exchange of person, claiming that the person in the cell was actually Medhanie Tesfamariam Berhe, an Eritrean refugee. In these two years, evidence presented by Berhe's family and Mered's wife, Lidya Tesfu, have reinforced the suspicion that at the moment there is an innocent man behind bars.
The DNA of the son of one of the most sought-after men in the world shows that the man who spent almost two years in an Italian prison awaiting trial is actually the victim of an identity exchange. The Guardianknows this . The Sicilian investigators announced the capture of the Eritrean trafficker Medhanie Yehdego Mered in Khartoum in June 2016, calling it the "arrest of the year".
