Claims ‘wrong man’ held by Italian authorities for trafficking

Italian authorities said they’re looking into claims that they arrested the wrong man in a major migrant-smuggling investigation.

Italian police announced on Wednesday that Medhane Yehdego Mered, a prime suspect in the trafficking investigation, was in their custody, and released a video of a man they said was Mered being escorted off a plane in Rome from Sudan, where he was arrested two weeks ago.

Authorities said he was involved in smuggling migrants from sub-Saharan Africa via lawless Libya and across the Mediterranean to Europe.