'We got him, we got him!' roared the British media yesterday, June 8th, 2016...
Italian and British police are urgently investigating whether they caught the wrong person in a much-hyped anti-smuggling operation said to have netted one of the world's most-wanted people smugglers.
Investigators in both countries announced with great fanfare on Wednesday morning that they had seized Medhanie Yehdego Mered, a 35-year-old Eritrean whom an Italian prosecutor called "the boss of one of the most important criminal groups operating in central Africa and Libya".
Britain's National Crime Agency (NCA), which was involved in the investigation, hailed the capture of "one of the world's most-wanted people smugglers", following his extradition on Wednesday to Italy from Sudan, where he had been arrested.
But just hours later both Italy and Britain were looking into whether the Sudanese had sent them the wrong man, after three close friends of the detainee alleged to the
Guardian that he was the victim of mistaken identity.
They said the man sent to Italy was in fact Medhanie Tesfamariam Berhe, known to some friends by his ancestral name of Kidane,
a 27-year-old refugee arrested in a street in Khartoum late last month.
He shared a first name with the wanted man, but he had never been to Libya, where Mered was supposed to have centred his operations, and had nothing to do with people-smuggling, the three men claimed.
Comment: Presidents do not run the U.S. -- these people do!