With Ali Fagan, Lorenzo Tondo, Hans Peterson Hammer. Duration: 60’
An Italian trial is making headlines all over the world - everywhere but in Italy. It’s the very last stage of a farcical, and unfortunately tragic international intrigue: the hunt for the most wanted human trafficker on the planet, the Eritrean Medhanie Yehdego Mered, better known as "The General".
In order to catch and prosecute him in our country, Palermo Public Prosecutor's Office (as well as many other European police forces) applied to this case the same investigation techniques they use to counter Cosa Nostra bosses. The outcome has been a disaster: due to a mistaken identity case, an innocent person was jailed in place of the actual trafficker.
The European police forces keep on denying the mistake, but the real “General” has been tracked by reporters down in Uganda, where he’s having the time of his life in the nightclubs of Kampala.
The story of this awful mess was masterfully told by “Generalen”, an investigative documentary conceived in Italy but produced by Swedish TV SVT in collaboration with The Guardian.
Authors and producers of that investigation, which has become a worldwide success, will literally restage the Palermo trial in Riccione. The prosecution's thesis, presented with the videos of the real debate, will be dismantled by the defense of Mered's doppelganger, victim of the unsuccessful European approach to the migrant crisis: an iniquitous approach that has even led Western democracies to collaborate with rogue states and bloodthirsty regimes.