Turkey jails 2 over Aylan Kurdi's death

A Turkish court on Friday sentenced two Syrian people smugglers to more than four years in prison over the drowning of Aylan Kurdi, the toddler who became a symbol of Europe’s refugee crisis when his lifeless body washed up on a Turkish beach.

The court in the resort town of Bodrum found Syrian nationals Muwafaka Alabash, 36, and Asem Alfrhad, 35, guilty of trafficking migrants and sentenced them to four years and two months, the Dogan News Agency said.

But it cleared them of causing the death of five people “through deliberate negligence”, a charge that carried a sentence of up to 35 years in prison.

Pictures of the three-year-old Syrian toddler face down in the sand on a Turkish beach triggered global anguish and the public outcry, to a certain extent, spurred the EU into greater action in the crisis.

He drowned after his family decided in early September to make the risky journey across the Aegean Sea from Turkey to Greece in an overloaded open boat.

Aylan’s mother Rihana and brother Ghaleb, four, and two others also died in the same accident as they attempted the crossing from Bodrum to the island of Kos.

Aylan’s father Abdullah Kurdi had been implicated in the tragedy, with Turkish authorities originally accusing him in absentia of being responsible for the deaths and driving the boat at the time of the disaster.

However prosecutors had dropped the legal proceedings against Kurdi, who now lives outside of Turkey, at an earlier stage in the trial.

A lawyer for the defendants, Kemal Ertugrul, said the pair would not have been jailed if they were Turkish and reaffirmed the past accusations against Abdullah Kurdi.