Italian prosecutors investigate pair who say they got the wrong people smuggler

Prosecutors try to undermine testimony of two witnesses claiming they mistook identy [sic] of Eritrean man held in June

Italian prosecutors accused of arresting the wrong person in a smuggling trial in Sicily have responded by launching an investigation into their accusers, a court has heard. In June, prosecutors in Palermo claimed to have arrested one of the world’s most wanted people smugglers, a 35-year-old Eritrean called Medhanie Mered.

But at a hearing earlier this month, two of the smuggler’s former victims said they did not recognise the detained man, and argued officials had seized the wrong person. Separately, a family of Eritrean exiles said the man on trial was in fact their relative, Medhanie Berhe, a 29-year-old former dairy hand, and now a victim of mistaken identity.

This caused considerable embarrassment to the prosecutors – as well as to Britain’s National Crime Agency, who had also hailed their involvement in his arrest.

Attempting to undermine the testimony of the two witnesses, the prosecutors said at the trial’s most recent hearing on Thursday that they had launched an investigation into the former victims’ backstories. In the Palermo courtroom, prosecutors Calogero Ferrara and Claudio Camilleri said their investigation showed there was no proof the pair had even been to Italy before reaching Sweden, where they currently live.

In addition, the prosecutors have said they are monitoring some of the activities of the defendant’s lawyer. Attorney Michele Calantropo has requested access to a refugee camp in Sicily, where he hopes to meet Eritreans who can corroborate the claims of the first two witnesses.

In response, Ferrara and Camilleri said: “In the event that the lawyer will be authorised to enter [the camps], we will ask the director of the immigration camp to give us all the details and the names of the people he will meet with.”

Calantropo said: “There are [some] people fighting for the truth while other people are instead fighting to win a trial.”

Elsewhere in the courthouse on Thursday, another lawyer representing an alleged Eritrean smuggler in a separate case also raised similar concerns. Mulubrahan Gurum, a 42-year-old Eritrean, is accused of being Mered’s financier. But Gurum’s lawyer, Isotta Maio, believes prosecutors have caught the wrong man.

Interviewed by the Guardian, Maio said that of the 1,700 wiretapped conversations on Gurum’s cellphone, only seven have been used in the trial as evidence of his connection to smuggling. Maio said her client cannot be clearly identified in five of the seven recordings, while none of them include specific references to the smuggling process.

She said: “My client is considered to be the cashier of the organisation, but the money he [talks about] in the seven wiretappings … are small amounts of money, such as €300.” A single Eritrean would expect to pay about $2,000 (£1,500) to cross the Mediterranean to reach Italy.

Prosecutors are maintaining a media blackout about the cases, and have declined to comment.

Read more: Eritrean smuggler trial in Sicily has wrong man, say former victims