Africa’s most wanted

It’s Saturday morning in the courtyard of the Al-Zawiyah detention centre on the outskirts of Tripoli and Colonel Nourdeen Mishaal of Libya’s Ministry of Interior’s Department for Combating Illegal Immigration is about to have his weekend ruined. The Colonel has delivered an impassioned speech praising his own government and exhorting the West to do more to help in the battle against the people smugglers responsible for the thousands of migrants arriving in Europe every week.

He dismisses his regime’s pariah status (the Islamist government has no international recognition). If there is a problem with migrants, he states with the full authority of his office, then the blame lies with western intransigence.

It is not long, however, before Colonel Mishaal’s ministerial swagger begins to evaporate. Swatting away the flies in the stinking heat of the prison courtyard, he is not at all prepared for the line of questioning that follows. This includes allegations of brutality and rampant corruption throughout the penal system under his control. Far from combating people-trafficking, it turns out, Mishaal’s men are benefiting from it.

When he demands evidence, we show him the results of Operation Glauco. This is an ongoing 18-month investigation into Africa’s most organised and ruthless people–trafficking organisation conducted by the Italian Squadra Mobile.

In an impressive feat of detection, the Sicily-based cops have compiled over 700 pages of evidence against the trafficking gang. Veterans of the decades-long war against the Sicilian Cosa Nostra (the Mafia), the investigative squad employed all the same techniques that worked against their traditional enemy — including covert surveillance, witness protection and, above all, mobile phone intercepts.

It is evidence from the phone taps that prove the Colonel’s prison officers are bent. In May of last year, one of the top-dog traffickers was taped boasting about how he bribed the guards in the detention centres.