THE migrant father of the three-year-old whose lifeless body washed up on a Turkish beach rocked the world has now been accused of being the people smuggler who captained the ill-fated boat trip to Europe.
The shocking claims made by a woman who lost two of her three children during the perilous journey were revealed by her Australian cousin to a broadcaster last night.
Zainab Abbas said Abdullah Kurdi, the father of Aylan, was the driver of the boat which capsized in the Agean Sea and had lied to the world.
Mr Kurdi has previously claimed he took over the wheel at the dinghy when the captain panicked and jumped ship into the water.
An outpouring of sympathy and support for refugees followed the photo of Aylan's body washed up on Turkish shores.
Yet some have begun to pick holes in Mr Kurdi's story, with some claiming the images were manipulated and Aylan's body had been moved in order to take a more effective photos, according to the French newspaper Le Monde.
Ms Tahseen told The Sydney Daily Telegraph her cousin told her Mr Kurdi was definitely at the wheel of the doomed boat for the entire journey.
Mrs Abbas was at the back of the boat with her two children who died Haider, 9, and Zanab, 11, while her husband Ahmed Hadi was at the front with their youngest daughter Rawan when boat flipped.
Ms Tahseen said: “Zanab asked Abdullah Kurdi for life jackets. He gave them four but they were five. She didn’t wear a life jacket.
But Ms Abbas told her Sydney-based cousin Lara Tahseen that she paid USD 10,000 for the voyage which was captained by Aylan's father.
Ms Tahseen said: “He was a smuggler, yes, he was the one driving the boat.
She claimed another human trafficker to whom the Abbas family paid the money had told them the captain was taking his own children on the voyage.
Ms Abbas said via her cousin: He said ‘don’t worry, the captain of the boat, the driver, is going to bring his two kids and his wife.
The Iraqi mother said the boat was travelling faster than its capacity and was overcrowded with desperate refugees.
He was the one driving the boat right from the start. When they set off five minutes in he was looking left and right, worried, then he was speeding. Even his wife was screaming at him to slow down.
The family of five was told there would only be six people on the boat - but when they boarded there were 14.
Ms Abbas told her cousin: He was going crazy, like speed.
Turkish authorities have charged four men over the incident which killed at least 12 people - but Mr Kurdi was not one of them.
The devastated father denied the claims last night, saying: I lost my family, I lost my life, I lost everything, so let them say whatever they want.
Ms Abbas, her husband and their third child survived the tragedy. The bodies of their two children who perished arrived in Baghdad on Wednesday.[1]