{"id":121463,"date":"2015-09-12T18:08:53","date_gmt":"2015-09-12T18:08:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=121463"},"modified":"2015-09-16T06:10:08","modified_gmt":"2015-09-16T06:10:08","slug":"father-of-aylan-kurdi-accused-of-being-a-people-smuggler","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=121463","title":{"rendered":"Father of Aylan Kurdi accused of being a ‘people smuggler’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jenny Stanton — Daily Mail Sept 11, 2015<\/h1>\n
\"Abdullah<\/a>

Abdullah Kurdi<\/p><\/div>\n

The father of Syrian refugee <\/a><\/strong><\/span>Aylan Kurdi has hit out at an Iraqi mother who accused him of being a ‘people smuggler’ after she lost two children on the same boat that killed his own family.<\/span><\/p>\n

Zainab Abbas, whose son and daughter died on the doomed boat trip, said Abdullah Kurdi was the driver of the boat and begged her not to ‘dob him in’.<\/span><\/p>\n

But the grieving father, speaking to MailOnline from the Syrian city of Kobane, denied her claims and says he does not understand why she is trying to tarnish his reputation.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

The photograph of the tiny body of Aylan shocked the world and sparked an outpouring of support for Syrian refugees.<\/span><\/p>\n

He died alongside his brother Galip, five, and mother Rehan, when their boat capsized after setting off from Bodrum, Turkey, in a bid to reach the Greek island of Kos.<\/span><\/p>\n

Reacting to Ms Abbas’ claims, Mr Kurdi said: ‘This is not true. If I was a people smuggler, why would I put my family in the same boat as the other people? I paid the same amount to the people smugglers.<\/span><\/p>\n

‘I am devastated for the loss of my family and what happened to me. This is too much for me and now they want to ruin my reputation.’<\/span><\/p>\n

Yesterday,\u00a0Ms Abbas blamed the tragedy on Mr Kurdi, who has since returned to Kobane to bury his wife and two children.<\/span><\/p>\n

‘Yes, it was Abdullah Kurdi driving the boat,’ Ms Abbas told Australian TV station Network Ten <\/a><\/strong><\/span>through her cousin Lara Tahseen today.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ms Abbas said the man she paid to book her passage told her it would be safe because the driver was taking his wife and two children.<\/span><\/p>\n

‘When I lost my kids, I lost my life, how can he lie to the media?’ her cousin Ms Tahseen said, translating for Ms Abbas.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>

The left-hand part of this photo has been widely published by the Atlantist Press. The victim, a Syrian Kurd child, Aylan Kurdi, is supposed to have been washed up by the sea. However, his corpse is perpendicular to the waves instead of being parallel. On the right-hand part, the presence of an official Turkish photographer reinforces the suggestion of a staged event. In the background we can see people bathing.<\/p><\/div>\n

‘He said: “Please don’t dob me in.” That was in the water.’<\/span><\/p>\n

Ms Abbas said Mr Kurdi was speeding in the overcrowded boat, which did not have enough life jackets.<\/span><\/p>\n

She said her husband told him to be careful shortly before the boat capsized, reportedly killing at least 12 people.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mr Kurdi, who did not know Ms Abbas’ name until MailOnline told him it, added: ‘I thought about driving the boat but I didn’t do it. That is all lies.<\/span><\/p>\n

‘I know there was an Iraqi family on the boat and two children had died – a boy and a girl. I don’t know why Zainab is saying that.<\/span><\/p>\n

‘She had the same as me – she lost her children, I lost my children.<\/span><\/p>\n

‘I have three graves in front of me and I have no one.’<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Ms Abbas’ 12-year-old daughter Zainab and eight-year-old son Haidar were trapped under the small boat when it capsized in the Aegean Sea.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Ms Abbas, her husband and their three children had left Iraq, travelled to Istanbul and then made their way to Bodrum on the coast.<\/span><\/p>\n

They spent almost two weeks trying to get an opportunity to make the dangerous crossing to Greece.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ms Abbas, her husband and their third child survived the tragedy. The bodies of the two children who perished arrived in Baghdad on Wednesday.<\/span><\/p>\n

They were taken to the Shiite shrine city of Karbala, south of Baghdad, and buried in small graves in the dusty soil as weeping relatives looked on.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Iraqi mother who lost two of her children when the boat capsized claims Aylan Kurdi’s father is a “people smuggler”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[19,83],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-121463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-Behind_The_News","category-syria"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=121463"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121463\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":121467,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121463\/revisions\/121467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=121463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=121463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=121463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}