BERLIN: The father of Aylan Kurdi, the three-year-old Syrian refugee boy whose body washed ashore on a Turkish beach a year ago, on Thursday denounced the world’s failure to stop the bloodshed in his home country.
“The politicians said after the deaths in my family: Never again!” the bereaved father, Abdullah Kurdi, 41, told Germany’s Bild daily.
“Everyone claimed they wanted to do something because of the photo that touched them so much. But what is happening now? People are still dying and nobody is doing anything about it.”
Kurdi was speaking on the eve of the anniversary of the tragedy in the Mediterranean, in which he also lost his wife Rehab, 35, and their other son, five-year-old Galip.
Meanwhile, an American journalist has been arrested in Turkey and charged with “violating a military zone” after she returned from war-torn Syria, US officials said Wednesday.
US State Department spokesman John Kirby said Lindsey Snell had been detained on Aug. 6, and that US consular officials had been able to visit her almost three weeks later on Aug. 26.
Snell’s Twitter biography identifies her as an Istanbul-based video journalist who has contributed to several western networks and news organizations including MSNBC, Vice News and ABC.
On Facebook, she describes herself as hailing from Daytona Beach, Florida and to have graduated from the University of Florida in 2005. She is a Muslim and wears a headscarf in pictures.
Her last tweets were sent on Aug. 5, when she referred to having been imprisoned for ten days by militants from the Al-Nusra Front before escaping with the aid of a “brave man on a motorcycle.”
End bloodshed, appeals Aylan’s father
End bloodshed, appeals Aylan’s father
