His passion for football and admiration for a champion like Roberto Baggio had earned him the nickname Bija or Bidja. His much less noble nature for the business of smuggling and human trafficking had, instead, triggered an investigation against the man – killed in Tripoli by gunshots in his armored car – by the Agrigento prosecutor’s office: the prosecutors, investigating the violence in the Libyan detention centers, from where thousands of migrants were then transported to Sicily, and in particular, to Lampedusa, have started various segments of the investigation. One of these then led to three convictions, decided however by the court of Messina, because three men from his cell had been stopped at the hotspot of the Peloritan city. The commander of the Libyan Academy, Abdul Rahman Milad, victim of an ambush in Tripoli, was considered by the UN and the International Court of The Hague to be one of the main organizers of the trafficking of migrants from Libya on the route that leads to Italy. A brutal criminal according to the United Nations.
In his country he had been subjected to a short period of detention in 2020 before even obtaining an institutional position. The Agrigento prosecutor’s office, as well as the Palermo DDA, responsible for human trafficking, have been investigating his figure for years. For a long time, tens of thousands of migrants have landed on the coasts of Lampedusa passing through Libyan detention centers. The investigation would have ascertained links between Bija and three torturers arrested in Sicily 4 years ago and sentenced to 20 years in prison each. Among the numerous depositions collected by the Agrigento police, one dates back to 2019, the year of strong political conflicts between NGOs and the Italian government related to migrants. The agents in Lampedusa had separately interrogated some migrants who had passed through Zawiyah, on the coast between Tripoli and the Tunisian border, and rescued in July 2019 by the sailing boat “Alex”, of the Italian platform “Mediterranea”. From there, numerous confirmations of the role of Bija and his men had arrived. The investigations, as always in these cases, have remained somewhat blocked due to complications related to relations with the Libyan state.