Two smugglers sentenced to four years in jail after Aylan Kurdi’s death

MUĞLA – Doğan News Agency

AA Photo, inset DHA Photo

Two human smugglers have been sentenced to four years in prison for human smuggling in the case into the death of three-year-old Syrian refugee Aylan Kurdi, who became an international symbol of the ongoing refugee crisis last year. 

While Syrian nationals Muwafaka Alabash and Asem Alfrhad were sentenced to four years and two months in jail for human smuggling, they were acquitted of causing the deaths of five migrants through deliberate negligence. 

The image of the boy - his lifeless body lying face down on a beach in Bodrum - galvanized world attention on the refugee crisis, graphically illustrating the magnitude of the suffering and the treacherous journeys risked by migrants.

The trial of Alabash and Alfrhad opened at a court in the Aegean resort town of Bodrum on Feb. 11.

The duo had faced up to 35 years of imprisonment for causing five people’s death “through deliberate negligence.”

Aylan’s brother and mother also drowned in the ill-fated journey from Bodrum to theGreek island of Kos.