You doubtless recall the story of Alan Kurdi, the little boy whose drowned body photographed on a Greek beach brought greater attention to the refugee situation in Europe. We were one of the first to burst the bubble of the lies pushed around this story.

After the Paris terrorist attack and a number of migrant issues, the story shifted toward the dangers posed by migrants.

Abdullah Kurdi, the father of Alan, put out an ‘alternative Christmas message’ asking for sympathy and asking for people to accept Syrian refugees.

The NY Times just did a full piece on the ‘tragedy of the Kurdi family’.

But the paper of record glossed over very significant facts in the case in their haste to promote the family’s plight to push the refugee position. Perhaps most significantly that the father was the captain of the boat, therefore working with the smugglers.

Here’s the NY Times version of the facts:

The small boat foundered and flipped a few minutes into the journey. He tried to hold on to Ghalib and Alan, calling to his wife, “Just keep his head above water!” But all three drowned, one by one.

Other survivors added new details: Alan cried as water sprayed his eyes; an older woman took him on her lap; the smuggler leapt out, and Abdullah took the tiller. Nervous and inexperienced, he swerved over the waves, telling his children, “I’m with you; don’t worry,” just before the boat capsized. One woman remembered Abdullah, in the water, kissing one of his boys.

In the news media blitz that followed, some reports, quoting an Iraqi couple who lost two children in the disaster, said Abdullah was a smuggler. But it is a standard smugglers’ practice to have an ordinary refugee steer, often in exchange for a discount, and in a later interview, the Iraqis said they believed Abdullah was merely the designated refugee pilot.

Abdullah says that he got no discount, and that he and others tried to take control of the boat because “someone had to.”

Regardless, one thing is clear: Abdullah lost his family.

But the NY Times overlooks the full account of the ‘Iraqi couple’, which was also backed up by another passenger. Three passengers on record with their real names, not just ‘survivors’, saying that Abdullah Kurdi was the captain from the start, not that he took the tiller en route.

Ahmed Hadi Jawwad and his wife Zainab Abbas, whose 11-year-old daughter and 9-year-old son drowned, said Mr Kurdi panicked and accelerated when a wave hit the boat.

‘The story that (Mr Kurdi) told is untrue,’ Mr Jawwad said, speaking from his in-laws’ house in Baghdad on Friday. ‘I don’t know what made him lie, maybe fear.

‘He was the driver from the very beginning until the boat sank.’

Mr Jawwad said Mr Kurdi swam to them and begged them to cover up his true role in the incident.
And Mr Jawwad said his point of contact with the smugglers was a man called Abu Hussein.

‘Abu Hussein told me that he (Mr Kurdi) was the one who organised this trip,’ he said.

Mrs. Jawwad said that Kurdi had been speeding, according to the Daily Mail.

Amir Haider, another passenger, confirmed the account of the Jawwads, that Kurdi was the driver from the beginning.

Mr Kurdi told the Daily Mail that he never drove the boat, that people who said he did were lying, ‘I thought about driving the boat but I didn’t do it. That is all lies.’

Yet he told the NY Times that he had in fact driven the boat, albeit only jumped in, seemingly heroically, after he had to, to try to save everyone.

So NY Times, you have a fundamental problem with the story you present which is not only refuted by named survivors, but is refuted by Mr. Kurdi’s own prior ever-changing statements.

“Regardless, one thing is clear: Abdullah lost his family”. And he should be investigated for killing them and the other people on the boat because it is clear that he has lied about and obscured his role in their deaths.