http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21700680-catching-people-smugglers-hard-convicting-them-even-harder-tracking-traffickers?fsrc=rss%7Ceur
Migrant-smuggling
Tracking traffickers
Catching people-smugglers is hard, convicting them even harder
Jun 18th 2016 | ROME | From the print edition
WHAT’S in a name? For an Eritrean man hauled before a judge in
Palermo, Sicily, on June 10th, the answer could be many years in an
Italian jail. If, as he claims, he is Medhanie Tesfamariam Berhe, he
is a refugee and a victim of mistaken identity. But if, as the
prosecution maintains, he is Medhanie Yehdego Mered, then—according to
British and Italian investigators—he is a ruthless criminal, one of
the masterminds behind the best-organised route funnelling migrants
from Africa to Europe. Britain’s National Crime Agency (NCA) said it
had tracked him to the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, where he was
arrested on May 24th.
Mr Mered (or Mr Berhe) was extradited to Italy and jailed. Prosecutors
in Sicily, who first identified Mr Mered as a key figure in the
migrant-smuggling business, want him tried on charges of running an
operation in 2013 that ended in the deaths of 359 people, when a boat
capsized off the Italian island of Lampedusa. Yet defence witnesses
say the jailed man fled Eritrea for Sudan in the hope of joining
relatives in Europe or America. The defendant’s counsel has asked the
court for a scientific comparison of his client’s voice with that of
Mr Mered, who was wiretapped by Italian police in 2014.
The arrest of migrant-smugglers is not unusual. According to the
Italian interior ministry, more than 500 were taken into custody in
each of the past two years, having been discovered escorting irregular
migrants across the Mediterranean. But those detained were minor
players in an illegal business with an annual turnover which the
European border agency, Frontex, puts at €4 billion ($4.5 billion).
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The real challenge has long been to disrupt the organisers. That is
what makes the case in Palermo so important: it is either a farce, or
the most important breakthrough so far in the war on
migrant-smuggling.
The difficulties of bringing a people-smuggling kingpin to book are
immense. Peter Roberts of the Royal United Services Institute, a
think-tank, has studied the smugglers’ methods. He says their networks
involve up to 25 layers of intermediaries and facilitators, among them
an ever-changing cast of lorry drivers, travel agents, money changers,
people with access to safe houses and fishermen, along with bribeable
officials, soldiers and police officers. In Libya they also involve
the warring militias through whose territory the migrants pass.
Identifying individuals is difficult. “You have to be on the ground,
and there are going to be a lot of dead ends,” says Mr Roberts.
In recent years almost all the migrants reaching Italy have set off
from the Libyan coast. Some, notably Bangladeshis, came to work in
Libya but decided that the risk of staying in a country that has
descended into anarchy was greater than that of crossing the
Mediterranean in a fragile boat. According to Frontex, the
others—asylum-seekers and economic migrants—arrived from east Africa
via Sudan, or from west Africa through Niger.
The transit areas include violent places where a Western investigator
would be dangerously conspicuous and where officials are often in the
pay of the smugglers. One theory about the latest operation is that
Sudanese officials might have pointed investigators to the wrong man.
Against this background, and given that terrorism has been a higher
priority for many European police forces and intelligence agencies, it
is easy to understand why the war on migrant-smugglers has so far
yielded modest results.
The operation against Mr Mered shows that could now be changing. “For
the first time, they are using the tools they have,” says Kristina
Touzenis of the International Organisation for Migration. Chief among
these is the UN Convention against Transnational Organised Crime,
which came into force in 2003. It allows states to prosecute
activities that took place abroad, but were carried out with a view to
committing a crime on their territory. And while unauthorised
immigration is not a criminal offence in most countries, facilitating
it for gain is.
The involvement of the NCA suggests Britain has moved the
investigation of migrant smuggling up its agenda. The same may be true
of France, which is concerned about links between the trade in human
beings, terrorist funding and arms trafficking. Yet experts say much
still needs to be done. No one European agency is responsible for
fighting the people-smugglers. That might be worth changing.
Received on Sat Jun 18 2016 - 21:13:27 EDT