Thread by @meronina

Thread on the smuggler Medhanie Yehdego Mered.
The first time I heard the name Medhanie  was in 2010 when I was contacted by family members whose loved ones were held hostage in Sinai, I was told by a group of 30 Eritreans (age 16-30) from the same/nearby villages in #Eritrea.

The group of 30 wanted to go to Israel and were looking for smugglers who could smuggle them, and often when choosing a smuggler you try to find a smuggler that you know or someone from your village thinking you are in good hands.

The group found three fixers from their villages (Medhanie, Mihreteab and John), the three would gather as many as they could and would make a deal with Sudanese/Egyptian smugglers. Once the refugees/migrants reach Sinai near the Israeli border

that’s when the money has to be paid, the smugglers will allow you to call your family member and you contact your family/friends and tell them to make the payment to the fixers. The deal between the 3 fixers and the group was, 3500 USD a person

to be paid in Eritrea to family members of the 3 fixers in Eritrea. So the group reaches Sinai and contact their family members and tell them to make the payment, once all the payment was made the group was told that they were sold and that the new payment was 50 000 USD a person

when the group tried to call the 3 fixers they couldn’t reach them as they changed numbers. From that point on I started inquiring about the 3 fixers & has followed them closely, interviewed those who knew them and has covered many programs regarding the three in my radio program

Fast forward three years and I started hearing Medhanie’s name in relation to Libya when he was just starting smuggling/fixing business, within 2 years he had smuggled close to 15 000 Eritreans and became one of the biggest smugglers in Libya between 2013-2015.

Beginning of 2015 he contacted me and asked why I mentioned him a lot in my program, he wanted to know why the Daily Mail wrote about him, he wanted to know why his name was mentioned everywhere and why Europeans were looking for him. I told him he was wanted for smuggling,

and he was genuinely surprised to find out that he could be wanted for smuggling and said “I have smuggled over 13 000 in the past 2 years alone and as long as I am not accused of mistreatment I am fine”.

He asked me to set up interviews for him with western journos to clarify things that were written about him, he also agreed that I do a series of interviews with me. For almost 5 months we spoke for many hours, at that time The BBC had shown interest for a radio documentary

on Medhanie to which he had agreed. By mid-2015 he decided to leave Libya as his life was in danger because of the Daily Mail article which said he had over 100 million USD, he became a target of many in Libya and he decided to go back to Sudan.

Less than a year later it was announced that the British had arrested Medhanie Mered and handed him over to the Italians, hours later after the announcement people started calling me saying that the Italians have a wrong man.

By the evening I had spoken to multiple of refugees who were smuggled by the real Medhanie and they all said wrong person, here is a detailed background on the mistaken identity case newyorker.com/magazine/2017/…

Also @lorenzo_tondo has written series of articles and book on the case.

No matter what kind of evidence we brought the Italians refused to hear us out, they decided to persecute an innocent person even though they knew they had arrested the wrong person. From that day on I decided to fight for the wrongly arrested young Eritrean man in Italy,

I testified at the Palermo court, I brought refugees who were mistreated by the real Medhanie to testify in Italy…etc. No matter what evidence we brought the Italians wouldn’t hear it, so the only thing left to do was to track down the real Medhanie and prove to the world

That they have a wrong man. Medhanie the smuggler to his credit did do everything he can to help out the wrongly arrested man, he contacted The New Yorker and said the Italians has a wrong man, he allowed his wife to testify and say that the arrested man was not her husband,

he allowed his child to do DNA testing to prove that they have a wrong man and unfortunately the Italians wouldn’t hear it. Later on we found out that it was the Swedish who tipped off the British and that the arrest was a collaboration of more than 10 EU member states,

exactly 3 years ago this week together with Swedish TV’s UG Team we decided to track down the real Medhanie who was living in Uganda at the time. ⬇️

The idea was to find him and ask him for an interview and if that was not possible to at least film him with a hidden camera, we already had enough info about his whereabouts in Kampala, where he drinks at nights, which hotels he frequents, houses of the women he dates…etc.

Me wearing a black shirt with a sewn in hidden camera with the heat of Kampala was unbearable, for days we went to all kinds of nightclubs, hotels, bars, restaurants and his mistresses house in hope to run into him.

Days later we noticed that a black SUV with black tinted windows and no plate number started following us around which made our bodyguards nervous and afraid, Swedish TV decided to abort the mission for our safety

and plus we had gathered enough testimonies from people who had recently seen him. He started telling people that I was his number one enemy more than the Europeans who were hunting him and has threatened me many times since.

last year the lucky smuggler Medhanie finally agreed to meet me in person with no camera, no phones, no bodyguards and just the two of us. Exactly a year ago I met him in person, I asked everything I wanted to ask.

I hope to a documentary about him in the near future…time will tell

More next time... on the other two fixers (Mihreteab and John)

First picture with Swedish TV team, the people behind the documentary The General. Pic 3 me and the bodyguards and of course Ugandan food :-)
-end of thread -

Another thing I forgot to add in this thread is that the man who persecuted the wrongly arrested man instead of freeing him he decided to go after those of us who were fighting for him, he actually had the audacity and had indightment against me which he dropped within 24 hours.

Fate of the group, 50 K USD ransom, most came from poor family and only 6 survived, the rest died of torture. Years later one of the 6 who survived testified at the trial of the mistaken identity case, he said I know the man who put me through hell and this man is not him.