Top Eritrean migrant smuggler extradited to Italy
Print Edition
AN Eritrean dubbed “the general,” suspected of controlling a migrant trafficking network responsible for shipping thousands of people to Europe and sending some to a watery grave, has been extradited to Italy.
Medhanie Yehdego Mered, 35, who had been on a wanted list since 2015 for international people smuggling, was arrested in the Sudanese capital Khartoum and flown to Italy late on Monday.
He is “the accused ringleader of one of the four largest criminal migrant trafficking organizations,” the Sudanese interior ministry said in a joint statement with the country’s British and Italian embassies.
Referred to in wiretapped conversations between his subordinate 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.
His arrest is “a key turning point in the fight against people trafficking,” prosecutor Francesco Lo Voi told a press conference, while Italian Interior Minister Angelino Alfano dubbed it “an extraordinary result” in a bid to stop “merchants of death.”
It is the first time a suspected top smuggler has been arrested in Africa and brought to face justice in Italy, which has been overwhelmed by the arrival of hundreds of thousands of people since the migrant crisis began in 2008.
Mered allegedly directed operations in Africa but also kept fellow operators in Italy up to date on the arrival of boats, so migrants could be picked up and squeezed for more money to continue to their final destinations in Europe.
Between 2012 and his capture, he also played a key role in helping migrants escape from Libyan jails and detention centers, bribing guards to let them out and then holding them to extort money from their relatives back home, police said.
Mered was tracked down by the Sudanese intelligence services, with support from Italy’s organized crime police and Britain’s National Crime Agency.
A top Sudanese police officer said that Mered was “accused of smuggling youngsters from Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia and Sudan across the Mediterranean through Sudan or Libya or Egypt.”
According to the UN’s refugee agency, over 48,500 people have arrived in Italy by boat so far this year. More than 10,000 have died crossing the Mediterranean to Europe since 2014.
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