It is alleged the man captured, pictured left, is Medhanie Kidane - not Mered Medhanie, on the right, a notorious people smuggler.
British and Italian police are
investigating claims they caught the wrong person in an international
operation to capture one of the world's most wanted people smugglers.
Mered Medhanie, known as "The General", is believed to be
the mastermind behind a major criminal organisation responsible for
smuggling thousands of migrants from the Middle East and Africa to
Europe.The 35-year-old Eritrean is accused of being partly responsible for the 2013 Lampedusa tragedy in which at least 359 migrants lost their lives when their boat capsized off the Italian coast.
Medhanie, wanted by authorities in Italy, was arrested in Sudan after Britain's National Crime Agency (NCA) tracked him down to an address in the El Diem area of the country's capital Khartoum.
However, close friends of the detainee have told The Guardian he is a victim of mistaken identity.
An NCA spokesman said: "We have noted The Guardian's report. This is a complex multi-partner operation and it is too soon to speculate about these claims."
He said the NCA is "liaising with our partners", adding that the organisation is confident in its intelligence gathering process.
Medhanie, who got his nickname because he styles himself on former Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, featured in a Sky News report last year in which Special Correspondent Alex Crawford traced the journey taken by tens of thousands of migrants attempting to reach Europe.
They recorded Medhanie bragging about bribing guards in detention centres in Libya to hand over migrants to him.
The gang then held them to ransom, raping and torturing them until their relatives would pay up for the next leg of their journey.
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