2 Men Linked To Drowning Death Of Syrian Toddler Are Convicted Of Trafficking

A Turkish court has sentenced two Syrian nationals to four years in prison each in a case tied to the drowning death of Syrian toddler Alan Kurdi and four others.

Photos of 3-year-old Alan's body lying facedown on a Turkish beach in September 2015 produced a groundswell of global sympathy for people fleeing violence in the Middle East and North Africa, and laid bare the human cost of their dangerous journey across the Mediterranean.

However, the court in the coastal city of Bodrum "did not convict the smugglers for the deaths of Kurdi, his mother and brother and two other migrants in the Aegean sea last year," NPR's Peter Kenyon tells our Newscast unit. He adds that "the sentence came on a general human trafficking charge."

Turkey is under pressure from the European Union to crack down on trafficking. Peter has more:

Alan Kurdi's body lies on the shores of Bodrum, southern Turkey, in September 2015 after a boat carrying 23 migrants sank while reaching the Greek island of Kos.

Nilufer Demir/AFP/Getty Images

"After more than a million migrants reached Europe, countries began closing their borders and telling the migrants to go back. Turkey says it's sheltering more than 2 1/2 million Syrians. European Council President Donald Tusk is in Turkey for talks with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan."

Defendants Muwafaka Alabash and Asem Alfrhad have maintained they are not responsible for the deaths, The Associated Press reports. "Instead, they blamed Alan's father, Abdullah Kurdi, for the deaths — accusing him of organizing the trip."

Kurdi, a barber from the Syrian city of Kobani, has since returned to Syria. In December, he issued an appeal for "the whole world to open its doors to Syrians."

"If a person shuts the door in somebody's face, this is very difficult. When a door is opened, they no longer feel humiliated," Kurdi said at the time.

According to the International Organization for Migration, 418 migrants have died so far in 2016 while crossing the Mediterranean.