Suspected smuggler arrested in Erbil over 3 children’s drowning

ERBIL — Erbil security forces have arrested a suspected people smuggler they blame for the deaths of three children from Sulaymaniyah whose family’s boat capsized on the Turkey-Greece border last month, the Erbil Asayish Directorate said Tuesday.

The directorate is part of the Asayish, the Kurdistan Region’s internal security service. It named the suspect only by the initials R.A.M. and said investigators identified him after gathering information and looking into the case. Its forces arrested him when he returned to the Kurdistan Region, on the order of an Erbil Asayish investigative judge.

The directorate did not give the suspect’s full name, say what he is charged with or say whether anyone else is being sought.

The three siblings, ages 12, 9 and 5, were swept away when an inflatable boat carrying their family capsized on the evening of Oct. 14 in the Evros River, known in Turkey as the Meric, near the Turkish border city of Edirne. Their parents, Harem Mohammed and Hozan Rostam, survived.

The 9-year-old was pulled from the river but died in a hospital in Edirne, and Turkish search teams recovered the body of the 5-year-old, a girl, on Oct. 17. The two were brought home to Sulaymaniyah and buried on Wednesday, Oct. 28, and the parents also returned to the Kurdistan Region. The body of the eldest child had not been found by then, after nearly two weeks of searching along the river.

The family had traveled from Sulaymaniyah to Turkey, hoping to cross into Greece and reach Germany.

Barzan Reza, the children’s maternal uncle, told 964media on Oct. 15 that he had stayed in touch with the family until the children’s father called him in distress to say the boat had overturned and all three children had been swept away. Reza said smugglers had misled the family by assuring them that the water along the route was shallow enough to cross on foot.

Mohammed later told Rudaw that the smugglers had threatened him and forced the family onto an overcrowded inflatable boat despite his objections. He said the boat hit a tree shortly after entering the river and overturned, and that he was able to rescue only his wife.

In the same interview, Mohammed said two men from Erbil had arranged the crossing near Edirne. He said the family had deposited $55,000, to be paid to the smugglers once they reached Germany.

Kurdistan Region authorities have arrested smugglers after earlier deadly crossings. In June 2024, the Asayish arrested four suspected smugglers over a sinking off southern Italy that killed more than 30 people on a boat carrying mostly Kurdish migrants from Iraq and Iran.

In early October, the Kurdistan Regional Government said it was still searching for 10 people from Raparin missing in Libya, part of a group of migrants reported to have left by boat for Italy.