Italy probes 'wrong man' held for people-smuggling

Police said Medhanie Yehdego Mered, thought to be the leader of a migrant smuggling ring, was extradited to Italy from Sudan late on Monday.

But relatives of the man brought to Italy, who was pictured in photos released by Italy’s state police arriving in handcuffs in Rome, have told the British press that he is Medhanie Tesfamariam Kidane, a 27-year-old Eritrean refugee, and not Mered.

“The prosecuting team is carrying out investigations into the reports,” a spokesperson for Italy’s police told The Local.

"There is nothing more to add at this stage."

Reports that Italian and British authorities, which assisted Italy in the investigation, got the wrong man emerged in the British press last night, just hours after news of the extradition of one of Europe’s most-wanted men was delivered with much fanfare.

A woman in Norway who claimed to be the sister of the man arrested told the BBC’s Newsnight that her brother was “completely iocent”.

Chief prosecutor Francesco Lo Voi told a press conference on Wednesday that Mered’s arrest was “a key tuing point in the fight against people trafficking” while Italian Interior Minister Angelino Alfano dubbed it "an extraordinary result" in a bid to stop "merchants of death".

Mered, 35, who had been on a wanted list since 2015 for inteational people smuggling, was arrested in the Sudanese capital Khartoum in late May.

In a joint statement with Sudan's British and Italian embassies, the Sudanese interior ministry also said he is "the accused ringleader of one of the four largest criminal migrant trafficking organizations".

Referred to in wiretapped conversations between his subordinate alleged traffickers as "the general" for his control over a large area and number of "troops", Mered is accused of organizing the smuggling of up to 8,000 people a year on migrant boats.

Investigators believe his organization was responsible for packing migrants onto a boat that sank in 2013 off the Italian island of Lampedusa, claiming at least 360 lives in one of the worst disasters in the Mediterranean.

More details to follow.