Italian prosecutors charge adverb in human trafficking case, but do not seek sentence

Charges against “Mesi” were brought as part of a sprawling international investigation on human smuggling, but it appears Sicilian magistrates confused the word for “when” in the Tigrinya language of Eritrea with the name of a man they thought was a powerful smuggler.

“Mesi is a human trafficker who has trafficked a woman named Martha from Africa to Europe,” the prosecutors wrote.

A Tigrinya interpreter for the court has said, however, that the word is not a person’s name but means “when”. Three Eritrean interpreters separately said Mesi was not used as a name in Tigrinya.

Despite this, the prosecutors, who had already placed the suspected trafficker under investigation last year, ignored the court interpreter’s official assessment and last week formally charged “Mesi” with human trafficking.

The charges are part of the controversial trial in Palermo of a man named as Medhanie Yehdego Mered, who the Italian authorities regard as the “Al Capone of the desert”.