Anees
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Abdullah Kurdi, father of three-year old Aylan Kurdi. © Murad Sezer / Reuters
READ MORE: ‘I blame myself’: Father of drowned kids lays family to rest at home in Kobani (VIDEO)
The first woman to accuse Abdullah Kurdi of being a “people smuggler” was Zainab Abbas, an Iraqi refugee and a mother of a 12-year-old girl and an eight-year-old boy, who died in the sea accident off the Turkish coast. In an interview with Australia’s Channel Ten, she said he had asked her “not to dob him in.”
“Yes, it was Abdullah Kurdi driving the boat,” Abbas told Ten on Friday, as interpreted by her cousin Lara Tahseen. “'When I lost my kids, I lost my life, how can he [Kurdi] lie to the media?”
“He said ‘Please don't dob me in.’ That was in the water,” Abbas said, adding that she had to sell all the family’s belongings to get $10,000 she paid Kurdi for the journey. She added that the overcrowded boat didn’t have enough life jackets.
Abbas revealed that her husband asked the man to slow down, as he was speeding, but he wouldn’t listen.
READ MORE: Dead toddler Alyan Kurdi’s image used in ISIS propaganda magazine
Another Iraqi, 22-year-old Amir Haider also confirmed this version of the story, telling Reuters in a telephone conversation that he first thought that Kurdi was Turkish.
However, Kurdi denied the accusations, telling MailOnline that “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.”
While Kurdi came back to Kobani for his family’s funeral, Abbas with her husband and their third child returned to Iraq, where they asked the federal government to put them on a list of the 12,000 refugees Australia had promised to take in, after burying their children, Australian Associated Press reported.
Capsized boat survivors claim Aylan Kurdi's father is people smuggler — RT News
