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The Italian authorities have granted refugee status to an Eritrean man, victim of one of the most embarrbading misidentification cases in the country.
Last month, a Palermo judge acquitted Medhanie Tesfamariam Berhe of his status as a leader of human trafficking, confirming that he had been the victim of a mistaken identity when he had been arrested more than three years ago as part of a joint operation by the Italian and British authorities.
After the verdict, he was transferred to a deportation center in Caltanissetta, Sicily, pending his removal from the country. But on Friday, a panel of judges from the Siracusa Refugee Commission accepted Berhe's asylum application, which means he's free to stay in Italy.
"I can not say how happy I am," said 32-year-old Berhe at the Guardian outside the eviction center. "It was a nightmare – a nightmare that lasted too long."
Berhe was arrested in Karthoum, Sudan, on May 24, 2016. The Italian and British authorities introduced him to the press as a coup d'état, mistaking him for one of the human traffickers most sought after in the world, Medhanie Yehdego Mered, AKA the General.
A few hours after Berhe's arrest, hundreds of Mered victims claimed that the wrong man had been arrested. According to the suspect's family, far from being a known trafficker, he was an Eritrean refugee who made a living on a dairy farm and worked occasionally as a carpenter.
A three-year investigation by the Guardian uncovered witnesses and documents that the defense subsequently produced in court to prove its innocence.
A documentary made by the Swedish broadcaster SVT in collaboration with the Guardian revealed that the real Mered lived in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, spending his substantial profits in nightclubs while Berhe was risking fifteen years in prison.
In addition to the two DNA tests and a range of witnesses, the most crucial evidence of Berhe's innocence was a vocal badysis of him and Mered, who had been caught on a wiretap in 2014. The result concluded unequivocally that the imprisoned man was not the trafficker.
But prosecutors continued to insist that the man captured in Khartoum was the real smuggler and began launching an offensive against activists and journalists, putting in talks telephone conversations between journalists and exposing journalists. sources.
The prosecutor, Calogero Ferrara, did not call any witnesses to testify against Berhe, but at the end of his five hours of closing remarks on June 17, he dismissed suggestions that the wrong man had been committed and asked a 14-year prison sentence. .
Judge Alfredo Montalto of the Palermo Criminal Court rejected the prosecutor's claims. "It was a case of mistaken identity," said Montalto on July 12. "The man in prison was arrested wrongly."
Berhe was convicted instead of a much less serious charge of helping illegal immigration for helping his cousin reach Libya. Since he had already spent three years in prison, the judge ordered his immediate release.
Michele Calantropo, a Berhe lawyer, told the Guardian: "After the verdict, I rushed to the prison next to Berhe's sister to discover that he had transferred her to a detention center. expulsion for migrants. We had filed an application for official asylum. It was not fair to take him there.
"The judicial persecution of Medhanie has finally ended in the best possible way: with refugee status to which he is fully entitled," said Riccardo Noury, Amnesty International's spokesperson in Italy. "I shudder to think where it would be now if the miscarriage of justice against him had not been revealed."
Relatives have demanded that Berhe be awarded damages for his wrongful detention, as well as an investigation into the reasons why the main prosecutors in Sicily have taken legal action.
"Berhe is free, but this story will not be over until his name has been erased," said Calantropo.
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