Date: Friday, 07 June 2019
Immortalized on two different days , he appears in the first wearing a burgundy shirt that is conspicuously spotted with sweat and jeans. While the next day the outfit becomes more elegant: white shirt, black dress and hair arranged in a cut probably made for the occasion. And then ballets and smiles. Thus appears Medhanie Yehdego Mered , the human trafficker who was searched by authorities in half of Europe, immortalized in a video celebrating at his nephew's wedding. A circumstance of which, until now, only a few images were known, entered into the ongoing trial before the second Assizes Court of Palermo. And where from today to all effects enters, with the consent of the prosecution, even the short film. It would be, for the defense, the further and yet another demonstration that the defendant confined to Pagliarelli since June 2016 is not the trafficker to whom all have hunted, but the victim of a resounding exchange of person.
In fact, the accused has always not only declared his extraneousness to the accusations of human trafficking, but has always explained that he too is about to embark on the journey to Europe and call himself Medhanie Tesfamariam Behre . The video, introduced today in the classroom by the defense that recently received it via e-mail, was shot in Khartoum on 11 and 12 October 2015 , where it is customary to celebrate in two separate and consecutive days. Contacting the defense lawyer Michele Calantropo was, on 5 May, Yafeit fessehazion Ghebregziabhier, now residing in Calgary, Canada, who on his own initiative decided to look for him to send him the video in question. Also declaring to know both: Behre would have lived with a friend of his, while Mered would have met him just that fateful day at the wedding, "that was the first and also the last time I saw him".
