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E X P O S I N G A P E O P L E S M U G G L E R
I cannot claim any merit for this investigation that exposed a man accused of being deeply involved in migrant smuggling—and worse, accused of leading many people to their horrible deaths—but I'm glad to have been involved in it, albeit at a late stage. For nine months Sophia Yan (together with her colleague Mohammad Zubair Khan, and later with further support in Italy from Marta Abbà) gathered information, followed leads, interviewed people, compared dates, addresses and other details, and a lot more, and finally got the results that were published on Telegraph (paywall) recently.
Indeed, Sophia and her colleagues had done the research so well that we basically hit the jackpot right away, and the first man we talked to eventually turned out to be exactly the one Sophia had come to look for in northern Italy. (Really, this seemed like scenes from a film.)
For years, this man—originally from Pakistan—has been living in a peaceful small town called Turbigo, about an hour from Milan. As discovered by Sophia, he does have businesses (NOTE: the small stores in one of the photos have nothing to do with the investigation; they're just a street view of Turbigo) that are legitimate on paper, but their value is in some cases perplexingly low.
The good thing is that Pakistani authorities finally seem to be taking action (requests from distressed relatives of disappeared/dead migrants haven't been enough so far), and there's an international warrant for his arrest now. But how well the international cooperation will function remains to be seen.
Also Italian authorities were reached for comment, but one said: "There's no reason to comment on a situation that you yourself is evolving," and others haven't been available for comment so far.
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