It seems there may be a case of mistaken identity in the story of a man extradited to Italy on Tuesday on people smuggling charges.
The friend of the extradited smuggler, on Tuesday, said that the Police have deported the wrong person.
Prosecutors believe a man named Mered Medhanie, known as the general, is the person responsible for the operations to smuggle migrants from Africa to Europe.
But the extradited Eritrean man was named by friends as Mered Tesfamariam.
On Wednesday, the court said it had extradited to Italy an Eritrean national suspected of being a kingpin in an organised-crime network responsible for bringing thousands of migrants and refugees to Europe, the Palermo, Sicily.
“Mered is accused of being the advocate and boss of one of the most important criminal groups operating in central Africa and Libya that smuggles people first across the Sahara desert and then the Mediterranean Sea,” the court, led by prosecutor Francesco Lo Voi said in a statement.
Mered is suspected of working with an Ethiopian, Ghermay Ermias, who is still at large. Between them, they allegedly gathered in huge sums by bringing migrants from Libya to Italy across the Mediterranean on overcrowded and often unseaworthy boats.
The smuggling networks have mostly eluded international law enforcement agencies because they are based on anonymous cells spread across many countries.
Italy has been on the frontline of the immigration crisis.
Some 170,000 migrants reached Italy by sea in 2014 and 153,800 in 2015, according to the International Organization for Migration.
So far this year, just more than 40,000 migrants have arrived.