A Turkish cleaner has been jailed for 108 years after being charged with sexually abusing children at a camp praised by Angela Merkel as a safe haven for refugees fleeing war.
The 29-year old man, named as Erdel E in court documents, is reported to have abused 30 Syrian boys aged between eight and 12 over at a period of at least three months.
He was convicted of assaults on eight children whose families had filed complaints.
The court heard that Erdel E had paid the boys as little as 35p after raping them in the bathrooms of the state-run Nizip camp.
He did not deny the charges and alleged that other camp employees, including managers, had been involved.
The case has caused widespread outrage in Turkey, which hosts an estimated 2.75 Syrian refugees - more than any other country. The Nizip camp is home to some 14,000 Syrians and has been showcased to visiting dignitaries as a model example of Ankara’s humanitarian efforts.
The assaults are alleged to have ended at the start of the year just weeks before a visit by the UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi.
Mrs Merkel, the German chancellor, visited the camp in April for a tightly controlled photocall during which most refugees remained out of sight.
Court documents said EE, who hails from Turkey’s southern Şanlıurfa province, committed his crimes in areas he had identified as blind spots for the camp’s CCTV cameras. Local media said the families of other victims had kept quiet out of fear of deportation.
Around a tenth of the Syrian refugees in Turkey live in camps run by the government's Disaster and Emergency Management Authority which said last month it was taking all necessary measures in light of the case.
As European leaders try to deter asylum seekers from reaching their shores, hundreds of refugees have been returned from Greece to Turkey as part of a new refugee deal.
The agreement come under withering criticism from human rights groups who argue that Turkey is not a ‘safe’ third country for those fleeing war because it cannot offer the protections offered to refugees under international law.
Dozens of people returned from Greece - including Syrians - have been detained for weeks in isolated detention camps without access to specialised medical care.
At least one of these families has decided to return to Syria in what one aid worker in southern Turkey described as a “damning indictment of the refugee protection system here”.
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