Britain’s National Crime Agency says he is thought to have arranged the transit of a boat that sank near the Italian island of Lampedusa in October 2013.

At least 359 migrants died when the boat, travelling from Libya, capsized.

Prosecutors accuse Medhanie of running the network alongside an Ethiopian accomplice, who is still at large.

The two men are accused of buying up kidnapped migrants from other gangs and sending those migrants on barely seaworthy ships across the Mediterranean towards Europe.

In the recordings, he estimates he has smuggled 7,000 or 8,000 people. In one, he is reportedly heard laughing at the overloading of migrant boats.

The UK’s National Crime Agency said it had tracked him down to an address in Khartoum, where he was then arrested.

Medhanie is expected to appear in court on Wednesday.

Full profile

• The 39-year-old Eritrean once lived in Italy, where he came under the radar of anti-mafia investigators after trying to open a bank account in Dubai
• Later moved to Libya, where most African migrants start the treacherous journey to Europe, and finally to Sudan, where he was arrested
• His wife and family live in Sweden
• Called “the General”, as he styled himself on late Libyan leader Col Muammar Gaddafi
• Said to have driven around in a tank and boasted: “Nobody is stronger than me”
• Amount of money that went through him estimated in the billions

The post The notorious people smuggler Mered Medhanie extradited to Italy first appeared on Uganda Multimedia News & Information.

Members of parliament under the  Uganda Parliamentarians Forum on Food Security, Population and Development have demanded  a trillion shillings budget for the agriculture sector. Speaking to journalists at parliament the secretary General for this forum and MP for Kakuto county, Mathias Kasamba, said that its time for the government to find a big budget for agriculture sector since there is much investment that has been done in key sectors.

Kasamba said that each person should have a capacity to feed himself or herself by having enough food at the homestead instead of waiting  to be fed. He said that government should have addition of new agricultural technologies to boost food production. Kasamba said that  Uganda is still having food deficit despite some government intervention, calling for the people to have shared responsibility of growing enough food for local consumption and export.

The member of parliament for Kyadondo north, Kasule Sebunya, said that government should change its policy and directly involve in agriculture production instead of leaving the sector under private hands.

The speaker of parliament Rebecca Kadaga also challenged member countries of the Inter Parliamentary Union to set aside a contingency fund to cater for migrants seeking refuge in the various countries. Kadaga said that when migrants  move in large numbers they have an impact on the state of the environment and also put pressure on the local facilities, the local leadership and the local communities of the places in which they land.

Kadaga was addressing the Inter Parliamentary Union (IPU) Assembly currently meeting in Geneva, on the Assembly theme: The moral and economic imperative for fairer, smarter and more humane migration. She said that its  time for  the countries to  put into place contingency funds to cater for the possibility of housing, feeding and settling migrants in large numbers.

The speaker also complained about the bulk of the profits repatriated to the investor’s countries and not leaving much in the local country. She said It is important that the developed countries invest in infrastructure and industries to create jobs in the less developed countries.

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