An Italian MP has launched a parliamentary inquiry into the joint British-Italian operation that led to a man being held on suspicion of people smuggling despite fears he is the victim of mistaken identity.

In June last year officials from both countries claimed to have captured 35-year-old Medhanie Yehdego Mered, considered to be a key player in the smuggling of thousands of migrants and refugees from north Africa to Europe.

After being extradited from Sudan to Italy, the suspect faced two prosecutions, first in Sicily and then in Rome, despite a series of Guardian articles revealing doubts about his identity.

Those reports suggested he was in fact Medhanie Tesfarmariam Berhe, an Eritrean refugee with no connection to Mered’s alleged business.

Last week, the Eritrean department of immigration and nationality told the suspect’s lawyer, Michele Calantropo, that it believed the man in custody was Berhe. They sent him Berhe’s Eritrean ID card and the name of his mother, Meaza Zerai.

Speaking before a court hearing in Palermo later on Tuesday, Erasmo Palazzotto, a leftwing Italian MP and vice-president of the national commission for foreign affairs, said he had filed a parliamentary inquiry, hoping it would “accelerate the investigation”.

The inquiry document, seen by the Guardian, says: “The international intelligence identified Medhanie Yehdego Mered, Eritrean citizen of 35 years, as one of the top human smugglers in the world. But in the days following the operation, several newspapers and testimonies raised doubts about the true identity of the Eritrean extradited.

”We now kindly ask the government to make sure they verified the identity of the man arrested by the Sudanese police and if the authorities are certain that the man in custody is the right one.”



Last August, two months after the arrest of the suspected smuggler in Khartoum, a memorandum of understanding on immigration was signed in Rome between officials from Italy’s interior and foreign affairs ministry and their Sudanese counterparts. Its goal was to “enhance the collaboration between the two countries in border controls and fighting crime’’.

Calantropo said he feared that the recent diplomatic agreements between Italy and Sudan could have an impact on the trial.



Nuredin Atta, an Eritrean smuggler-turned-supergrass assisting in the Mered investigation, will appear at the court hearing in Palermo on Tuesday. Months ago, when prosecutors showed him a photo of the man arrested, he said: “I have never seen this guy before.”



Berhe has spent almost eight months in jail. Since his arrest, prosecutors have not been able to provide a single witness to testify against him.

The UK’s National Crime Agency and Italian prosecutors declined to comment “until the conclusion of the court case’’.