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Trump Admin Defies EU Threats, Allows Cuba-Related Claims

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The Trump administration is defying explicit legal threats the European Union privately issued last week to top U.S. officials by moving forward with its plans to ratchet up pressure on Cuba by allowing U.S. nationals to file legal claims against foreign companies that do business there.

The bold move by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in conjunction with the White House is a stark example of the escalating economic tensions between the U.S. and Europe that are already playing out on Iran sanctions policy and President Trump’s decision to tear up the Obama-era Iran nuclear deal.

In a sternly worded April 10 letter from top European Commission trade officials to Pompeo, obtained by RealClearPolitics, the EC threatened to launch a World Trade Organization lawsuit against the United States if it moved forward with plans to end a waiver, known as Title III of the Helms-Burton Act.

The Helms-Burton Act, also known as the Libertad Act, groups together all of the U.S. economic sanctions against Cuba and has been in effect since 1996.

Ending the Helms-Burton waiver would allow U.S. citizens to sue individuals and companies – including European citizens and businesses -- in U.S. courts for commercial use of property they once owned but that was seized by the Cuban government after 1959.

“Recent decisions taken by the U.S. in relation to Title III – namely to depart from the regular six-month extension and to have it partially activated – are raising serious concerns across the EU,” wrote Federica Mogherini, the European Commission’s vice president, and Cecilia Malmstrom, a member of its trade commission, in the letter obtained by RCP.

“The EU considers that the extraterritorial application of unilateral restrictive measures … is contrary to international law. Any decision to further activate it would have an important impact on legitimate EU (and US) economic operators.”

If the U.S. moves forward with its plans, the EU officials threatened to “use all means at its disposal, including in cooperation with other international partners, to protect its interests,” they wrote, pointedly noting that “the EU is considering a possible launch of the WTO case.”

The officials also noted that any claimant U.S. company or citizens would be subjected to counterclaims and liability for damages in EU courts.

Mogherini and Malmstrom sent copies of the letter to National Security Adviser John Bolton and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer.

On Wednesday, the Trump administration announced that it was rejecting those concerns and moving forward with its plans to allow U.S. citizens and companies who had their property seized by the Castros to sue those entities that have been using the confiscated property. Many of those entities are foreign companies such as hotels and shipping businesses.

The decision is a victory for hardliners who have been pressing the administration to take a tougher stance on Cuba policy. It comes amid a new administration effort to curb oil shipments between Cuba and Venezuela.

“For 22+ years, Title III of the Libertad Act was suspended in the hope the Cuban regime would transition to democracy,” Pompeo tweeted Wednesday morning, “but the @realDonaldTrump Administration recognizes reality – dictators see appeasement as weakness. President Obama’s attempt to moderate the regime didn’t work.”

Florida senators, both Republicans, issued strong statements supporting the move.

“By allowing US citizens to sue #CastroRegime for property stolen from them in #Cuba @realDonaldTrump is ending almost 6 decades of injustice,” Rubio tweeted. “It also punished regime for its criminal support of #MaduroRegime & honors veterans of Brigade2506 on this 58th anniversary of #BayofPigs.”

Europe has been on edge over U.S. Cuba policy in recent months after Pompeo shorted the length of the Title III waiver in March and allowed court cases to move forward in the U.S. against a number of Cuban companies with military ownership.

After Pompeo’s latest announcement, the European Union and Canada on Wednesday said they planned to take the matter up at the WTO. The EU is Cuba’s No. 2 trade partner and its largest foreign investor.

In a joint statement, Mogherini, Malmstrom and Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland said the U.S. decision would have “an important impact on legitimate EU and Canadian economic operators in Cuba.”

“We are determined to work together to protect the interests of our companies in the context of the WTO,” they said, adding that the U.S. action “can only  lead to an unnecessary spiral of legal actions.”

While Wednesday’s response from the EU and Canada fell short of a formal launch of a WTO case, it signaled the widening diplomatic rift between Europe and the U.S.

But the threats aren’t just a dramatic legal bluff. The EU launched a case against the U.S. in the WTO in 1996 after Helms-Burton passed, but they withdrew it after President Bill Clinton decide to resolve the matter by issuing a waiver, which presidents have extended every six months until the beginning of this year.

The current administration’s action is the most far-reaching of any U.S. president against Cuba over the last three decades. It’s part of the administration’s decision to elevate Latin America as a national security priority. Bolton delivered a speech last year at Miami’s Freedom Tower to a group of Cuban and Venezuelan exiles, calling the leftist governments of their homelands along with Nicaragua the “troika of tyranny in this hemisphere.”

Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla called the activation of Title III “an attack against international law and the sovereignty of #Cuba & third States.”

“Aggressive escalation of #US against #Cuba will fail. As in Giron (Bay of Pigs), we shall overcome,” he added.

Cuba has been struggling to boost its ailing economy by attracting foreign investments, and the action by the Trump administration could further hamper those efforts if the commercial enterprises involve confiscated property.

Jason Poblete, a Washington-area attorney who represents several claimants to confiscated Cuban property, said Europe has become too cozy with Havana because of its financial ties to the communist island nation.

“I wonder if the EU’s foreign minister and top trade official wrote a similar letter to [Rodriguez Parrilla] urging Cuba to consider negotiations to settle this matter once and for all?” Poblete told RCP. “My sense is they did not.”

“As with the Iran deal, Europe has demonstrated they are not interested in solutions,” he said. “America needs to look out for American interests first for a change.”

Susan Crabtree is RealClearPolitics' White House/national political correspondent.

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Lucara finds largest uncut diamond in recent history in Botswana mine

A 1,758 carat diamond recovered from from Lucara Diamond Corp.'s Karowe Diamond Mine in Botswana is pictured in this handout photo
A 1,758 carat diamond recovered from from Lucara Diamond Corp.'s Karowe Diamond Mine in Botswana is pictured in this undated handout photo obtained by Reuters April 25, 2019. Eduardo Hernandez M./Lucara Diamond/Handout via REUTERS

April 25, 2019

By Nichola Saminather

TORONTO (Reuters) – Lucara Diamond Corp has unearthed the largest uncut diamond in recent history in its Karowe mine in Botswana, the Canadian company said on Thursday, beating its own record discovery from November 2015 that it struggled to sell for nearly two years.

The 1,758-carat diamond is larger than a tennis ball and weighs close to 352 grams (12.42 ounces), it said in a statement. The stone is second in size only to the 3,106-carat Cullinan Diamond, recovered in South Africa in 1905.

Lucara’s shares rose as much as 11.4% to the highest in more than two months, before trading up 7% at C$1.69 shortly after midday as the Toronto stock benchmark edged down 0.1%.

The stone is the latest in a series of high-value recoveries for the Vancouver-based company at Karowe. Since introducing its XRT diamond recovery technology, Lucara has recovered 12 diamonds over 300 carats, the company said, including a 472-carat and a 327-carat diamond in April 2018.

The 1,109-carat “Lesedi La Rona,” which Lucara recovered in November 2015, failed to meet its undisclosed reserve price at a June 2016 auction, putting pressure on the company’s shares. British diamond dealer Graff Diamonds finally bought it for $53 million in September 2017.

Forbes reported late last year that Graff had created 67 finished gems from the stone.

(Reporting by Nichola Saminather; Editing by Richard Chang)

Source: OANN

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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez targeted by mystery multimillionaire donor

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s surging national profile has inspired a trio of Republican opponents from her home district — along with a multimillionaire mystery donor who could help close the gap in her foes’ long-shot race against her.

Just three months after taking office, the Democratic socialist congresswoman’s challengers include an Egyptian American journalist, who has already tossed her hat in the ring, and an NYPD cop-turned-high-school-civics teacher and conservative talk-radio producer, both of whom are seriously exploring a run against her.

And the fledgling challengers could get help from a wealthy New Yorker committed to backing an Ocasio-Cortez opponent, a GOP big said.

AOC IMPERSONATOR, 8, TAKES ON GREEN NEW DEAL, SOCIALISM IN VIRAL VIDEO

“There’s definitely national energy and money on this race,” Bronx Republican Chairman Mike Rendino told The Post, adding that he has been in touch with a mega-bucks donor hell-bent on getting AOC tossed.

Rendino wouldn’t divulge the donor’s name but said the individual is “worth over $200 million, plus [has] connections to raise money in Manhattan.”

Tom Doherty, a former Pataki deputy, said a Republican challenger to AOC would be able to “raise real national money.

“We need to put individuals forward and make the incumbent work for re-election,” Doherty said.

Click to read more from the New York Post.

Source: Fox News Politics

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Airbus management shake-up spreads to space unit

The Airbus logo is pictured at Airbus headquarters in Blagnac near Toulouse
FILE PHOTO: The Airbus logo is pictured at Airbus headquarters in Blagnac near Toulouse, France, March 20, 2019. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau

April 23, 2019

PARIS (Reuters) – A management shake-up at Europe’s Airbus accelerated on Tuesday as Nicolas Chamussy was replaced as the head of Space Systems.

Airbus said the 51-year-old space engineer would have an unspecified future role, while his job as head of space activities including the company’s 50 percent share of the ArianeGroup rocket venture will be taken by Jean-Marc Nasr.

The move comes less than four months after Nasr, 57, was named head of Asia-Pacific, responsible for group strategy and industrial issues and regional sales for Airbus Defence & Space.

Chamussy is a former chief of staff to Tom Enders, who stepped down earlier this month to make way for planemaking chief Guillaume Faury, and has been facing mounting competition from a new breed of private U.S. and other space contractors.

Companies such as Elon Musk’s SpaceX, LeoSat Enterprises, and Canada’s Telesat are working to enable data networks with hundreds or even thousands of tiny satellites that orbit closer to Earth than traditional communications satellites, a radical shift made possible by leaps in laser technology and computer chips.

Faury, 51, has implemented a tighter structure designed to simplify Europe’s largest aerospace group, while sidelining a number of executives previously close to Enders or former planemaking boss Fabrice Bregier, according to company watchers.

La Tribune, which first reported the changeover at space systems, said the reorganization could lead to other departures, accelerating a sweeping management overhaul already driven partly by an ongoing corruption probe and scheduled retirements.

An Airbus spokesman said Chamussy would stay inside Airbus and declined further comment on management changes.

The Space Systems division makes up 27 percent of Airbus Defence & Space revenues, which grew 4.4 percent last year to 11.1 billion euros ($12.5 billion). Space spending is rising but established players face increase competition within the United States, China, Japan and India.

Airbus is seeking to shore up its position by prioritizing a fledgling market for constellations of tiny satellites designed to broaden internet access and support new services. It launched six mini-satellites in February, the first of at least 600 to be launched in the next two to three years together with partner OneWeb.

(Reporting by Tim Hepher, editing by Louise Heavens)

Source: OANN

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Crowley had dirt on Ocasio-Cortez but decided not to use it in campaign

An overconfident Joe Crowley opted against using negative ammunition against Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez because he believed that he had the Democratic primary locked up and didn’t want to look weak in a race he was expected to walk away with.

Crowley, a longtime political power broker from Queens, was widely considered to be perfectly situated to become then-House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s successor before his stunning defeat last June that propelled the former waitress to the halls of Congress.

“Crowley had plenty of fodder he could’ve used against Ocasio-Cortez, but his top New York campaign operatives decided to take the punches and not hit back,” Politico reporters Jake Sherman and Anna Palmer write in their new book, “The Hill to Die On.”

“It wasn’t just that Crowley didn’t want to go dirty; he thought it would be a sign of weakness in D.C. if he was seen in a tight race against Ocasio-Cortez. He was supposed to be the next Democratic leader, not someone who had to fight for reelection,” the two write.

One piece of dirt Crowley decided against using was questionable financing practices of Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign — which a source said Crowley aides knew about before they became public this year.

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The conservative National Legal and Policy Center filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission last month charging that Ocasio-Cortez’s team used two affiliated political action committees to funnel hundreds of thousands of dollars into a limited-liability company to evade campaign finance laws.

Ocasio-Cortez has denied any wrongdoing.

Click for more from The New York Post

Source: Fox News Politics

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Lakers part ways with head coach Luke Walton

NBA: Los Angeles Lakers at New Orleans Pelicans
FILE PHOTO: Mar 31, 2019; New Orleans, LA, USA; Los Angeles Lakers head coach Luke Walton reacts during the second half against the New Orleans Pelicans at the Smoothie King Center. Mandatory Credit: Derick E. Hingle-USA TODAY Sports

April 12, 2019

By Rory Carroll

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The Los Angeles Lakers and head coach Luke Walton have agreed to part ways after the team posted a disappointing 37-45 record and failed to end a playoff drought stretching back to 2013.

Walton spent two seasons at the helm of a team that struggled to find the right pieces to complement 15-time All-Star LeBron James in his first season in Los Angeles.

“We would like to thank Luke for his dedicated service over the last three years,” Lakers general manager Rob Pelinka said in a press release issued on Friday.

“We wish Luke and his family the best of luck moving forward.”

Walton said he was grateful to team owner Jeanie Buss for the chance to coach the team, where he won two championships as a player.

“I want to thank Jeanie Buss and the Buss family for giving me the opportunity to coach the Lakers,” he said.

“This franchise and the city will always be special to me and my family.”

Former Cleveland Cavaliers coach Tyronn Lue is seen as an early frontrunner for the job, according to ESPN.

Lue, who won two championships with the Lakers as a player, coached James to a championship with the Cavaliers in 2016.

(Reporting by Rory Carroll; Editing by Ken Ferris)

Source: OANN

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England rise to third in world rankings ahead of Women’s World Cup

FILE PHOTO: Soccer: She Believes Cup Women's Soccer-England at Brazil
FILE PHOTO: Feb 27, 2019; Chester, PA, USA; England celebrates a goal against the Brazil during the second half of a She Believes Cup women's soccer match at Talen Energy Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Bill Streicher-USA TODAY Sports/File Photo

March 29, 2019

LONDON (Reuters) – England enhanced their reputation as one of the favorites to win the Women’s World Cup later this year after rising to third in FIFA’s rankings on Friday, leapfrogging tournament hosts France in the process.

Phil Neville’s squad moved up thanks to their success at the SheBelieves Cup in the United States earlier this month, where they drew with the hosts and secured wins over Brazil and Japan to win the four-nation competition for the first time.

However, world champions the U.S. maintain their top ranking and are still the team to beat going into the World Cup which takes place from June 7-July 7.

The Americans are the most successful team in the tournament’s history, having won it three times and have only been defeated once in their last 30 matches.

Germany remain second in the rankings while France slip down to fourth, although they were one of the few top nations not to participate in a friendly tournament this month. Corinne Diacre’s side beat Uruguay 6-0 on their last outing earlier this month.

France open the World Cup, which features 24 nations, against South Korea at Paris’ Parc des Princes on June 7.

(Reporting by Christian Radnedge, editing by Pritha Sarkar)

Source: OANN

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Tiger woods celebrates after winning the 2019 Masters
FILE PHOTO: Golf – Masters – Augusta National Golf Club – Augusta, Georgia, U.S. – April 14, 2019 – Tiger Woods of the U.S. celebrates on the 18th hole after winning the 2019 Masters. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

April 26, 2019

Tiger Woods is sending a message that he thinks he still has enough left, emotionally and physically, to win three more major championships to tie Jack Nicklaus’ record 18 titles.

Speaking to GolfTV in his first sit-down interview since the Masters, Woods said he has taken some time off since his victory at Augusta National, which still doesn’t feel real.

“Honestly, it’s hard to believe,” Woods said. “I was texting one of my good friends last night … that I couldn’t believe that I won the tournament. That it really hasn’t sunk in. I haven’t started doing anything. I’ve just been laying there. And every now and again, I’ll look over there on the couch and there’s the jacket.”

That’s the fifth green jacket for the 43-year-old Woods, who hadn’t won a major tournament since the 2008 U.S. Open. Along the way, four back surgeries, a divorce and other personal issues derailed him.

He said he has been spending time with his children – daughter Sam, 11, and son Charlie, 10 – who weren’t born when their father was the most dominant golfer on the planet.

“They never knew golf to be a good thing in my life and only the only thing they remember is that it brought this incredible amount of pain to their dad and they don’t want to ever want to see their dad in pain,” Woods said. “And so to now have them see this side of it, the side that I’ve experienced for so many years of my life, but I had a battle to get back to this point, it feels good.”

He said he hopes – maybe expects — they’ll see this side again.

And no one will take Woods for granted at the PGA Championship at Bethpage Black Course on Long Island, N.Y., which starts May 16.

Woods said he’ll be ready for a course he already conquered once in a major: the 2002 U.S. Open.

“I’m doing all the visual stuff, but I haven’t put in the physical work yet. But it’s probably coming this weekend,” he said.

Before Woods encountered health and personal problems, it was expected that topping Nicklaus’ major mark was “when” and not “if.” Then the certainty went away, but Woods thought he still had a chance.

“I always thought it was possible, if I had everything go my way. It took him an entire career to get to 18, so now that I’ve had another extension to my career – one that I didn’t think I had a couple of years ago – if I do things correctly and everything falls my way, yeah, it’s a possibility. I’m never going to say it’s not.

“Now I just need to have a lot of things go my way, and who’s to say that it will or will not happen? That’s what the future holds, I don’t know. The only thing I can promise you is this: that I will be prepared.”

–Field Level Media

Source: OANN

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Maria Butina, the Russian woman who was accused of being a secret agent for the Russian government, was sentenced to 18 months in prison Friday by a federal judge in Washington after pleading guilty last year to a conspiracy charge.

Butina, who has already served nine months behind bars, will get credit for time served and can possibly get credit for good behavior, the judge said. She will be removed from the U.S. promptly on completion of her time, the judge added, and returned to Russia.

MARIA BUTINA, ACCUSED RUSSIAN SPY, PLEADS GUILTY TO CONSPIRACY

An emotional and apologetic Butina said in court Friday she is “truly sorry” and regrets not registering as a foreign agent.

“I feel ashamed and embarrassed,” she said, adding that her “reputation is ruined.”

Butina has been jailed since her arrest in July 2018. She entered the court Friday wearing a dark green prison jumpsuit and spoke in clear English, with a slight Russian accent.

“Please accept my apologies,” Butina said.

Butina’s lawyer, Robert Driscoll, said after the sentencing they had hoped for a “better outcome,” but expressed a desire for Butina to be released to her family by the fall.

Prosecutors had claimed Butina used her contacts with the National Rifle Association and the National Prayer Breakfast to develop relationships with U.S. politicians and gather information for Russia.

Prosecutors also have said that Butina’s boyfriend, conservative political operative Paul Erickson, identified in court papers as “U.S. Person 1,” helped her establish ties with the NRA.

WHO IS MARIA BUTINA, THE RUSSIAN WOMAN ACCUSED OF SPYING ON US?

In their filings, prosecutors claim federal agents found Butina had contact information for people suspected of being employed by Russia’s Federal Security Services, or FSB, the successor intelligence agency to the KGB. Inside her home, they found notes referring to a potential job offer from the FSB, according to the documents.

Investigators recovered several emails and Twitter direct message conversations in which Butina referred to the need to keep her work secret and, in one instance, said it should be “incognito.” Prosecutors said Butina had contact with Russian intelligence officials and that the FBI photographed her dining with a diplomat suspected of being a Russian intelligence agent.

Fox News’ Jason Donner, Bill Mears, Greg Norman and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source: Fox News Politics

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An official Sri Lankan police Twitter account was deleted after it misidentified an American human rights activist as a suspect in the country’s Easter Sunday terrorist attacks.

On Thursday, police posted the names and photos of six people that they said were at-large suspects in the bombings that killed more than 250 people.

However, one of the names on the list was Muslim U.S. activist Amara Majeed, who quickly tweeted that she had been falsely identified.

“I have this morning been FALSELY identified by the Sri Lankan government as one of the ISIS terrorists that committed the Easter attacks in Sri Lanka. What a thing to wake up to!” she wrote.

SRI LANKA AUTHORITIES SAY EASTER ATTACK LEADER KILLED IN ONE OF NINE HOTEL BOMBINGS

She wrote in a follow-up tweet that the claim was “obviously completely false” and asked social media users to “please stop implicating and associating me with these horrific attacks.”

“And next time, be more diligent about releasing such information that has the potential to deeply violate someone’s family and community,” she continued.

Later, she wrote an update saying police apologized for wrongly mistaking her as a suspect.

Police said in a statement: “However, although one of the released images was identified as one Abdul Cader Fathima Khadhiya in the information provided by the CID, the CID has now informed that a) the individual whose image was labeled as Abdul Cader Fathima Khadiya is not in fact Abdul Cader Fathima Khadiya b) the individual pictured is not wanted for questioning c) Abdul Cader Fathima is the correct name of the suspect wanted by the CID.”

On Friday, the account, @SriLankaPolice2 was deleted with no explanation. Police did not release more information regarding the mistake.

Majeed, who founded “The Hijab Project” when she was 16 years old, told the Baltimore Sun that it was hurtful to be linked to the attacks.

“Sri Lanka is my motherland,” the Brown University student said. “It’s very painful to be associated with [the bombings].”

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Mohamed Zahran, the suspected leader of the attacks which targeted six hotels and churches, killed himself in a suicide bombing at the Shangri-La hotel. Police also said they had arrested the second-in-command of the group, called National Towheed Jamaat. Catholic churches in Sri Lanka canceled all Sunday Masses until further notice over concerns that they remain a top target of Islamic State-linked extremists.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source: Fox News World

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FILE PHOTO: Sri Lankan Special Task Force soldiers stand guard in front of a mosque as a Muslim man walks past him during the Friday prayers at a mosque, days after a string of suicide bomb attacks on Easter Sunday, in Colombo
FILE PHOTO: Sri Lankan Special Task Force soldiers stand guard in front of a mosque as a Muslim man walks past him during the Friday prayers at a mosque, five days after a string of suicide bomb attacks on Catholic churches and luxury hotels across the island on Easter Sunday, in Colombo, Sri Lanka April 26, 2019. REUTERS/Dinuka Liyanawatte/File Photo

April 26, 2019

By Tom Lasseter and Shri Navaratnam

KATTANKUDY, Sri Lanka (Reuters) – Mohamed Hashim Mohamed Zahran was 12 years old when he began his studies at the Jamiathul Falah Arabic College. He was a nobody, with no claim to scholarship other than ambition.

Zahran and his four brothers and sisters squeezed into a two-room house with their parents in a small seaside town in eastern Sri Lanka; their father was a poor man who sold packets of food on the street and had a reputation for being a petty thief.

“His father didn’t do much,” recalled the school’s vice principal, S.M. Aliyar, laughing out loud.

The boy surprised the school with his sharp mind. For three years, Zahran practiced memorizing the Koran. Next came his studies in Islamic law. But the more he learned, the more Zahran argued that his teachers were too liberal in their reading of the holy book.

“He was against our teaching and the way we interpreted the Koran – he wanted his radical Islam,” said Aliyar. “So we kicked him out.”

Aliyar, now 73 with a long white beard, remembers the day Zahran left in 2005. “His father came and asked, ‘Where can he go?’.”

The school would hear again of Mohamed Zahran. And the world now knows his name. The Sri Lankan government has identified him as the ringleader of a group that carried out a series of Easter Sunday suicide bombings in the country on April 21.

The blasts killed more than 250 people in churches and luxury hotels, one of the deadliest-ever such attacks in South Asia. There were nine suicide bombers who blew apart men, women and children as they sat to pray or ate breakfast.

Most of the attackers were well-educated and from wealthy families, with some having been abroad to study, according to Sri Lankan officials.

That description does not, however, fit their alleged leader, a man said to be in his early 30s, who authorities say died in the slaughter. Zahran was different.

INTELLIGENCE FAILINGS

Sri Lanka’s national leadership has come under heavy criticism for failing to heed warnings from Indian intelligence services – at least three in April alone – that an attack was pending. But Zahran’s path from provincial troublemaker to alleged jihadist mastermind was marked by years of missed or ignored signals that the man with a thick beard and paunch was dangerous.

His increasingly militant brand of Islam was allowed to grow inside a marginalized minority community – barely 10 percent of the country’s roughly 20 million people are Muslim – against a backdrop of a dysfunctional developing nation.

The top official at the nation’s defense ministry resigned on Thursday, saying that some institutions under his charge had failed.

For much of his adult life, Zahran, 33, courted controversy inside the Muslim community itself.

In the internet age, that problem did not stay local. Zahran released online videos calling for jihad and threatening bloodshed.

After the blasts, Islamic State claimed credit and posted a video of Zahran, clutching an assault rifle, standing before the group’s black flag and pledging allegiance to its leader.

The precise relationship between Zahran and Islamic State is not yet known. An official with India’s security services, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that during a raid on a suspected Islamic State cell by the National Investigation Agency earlier this year officers found copies of Zahran’s videos. The operation was in the state of Tamil Nadu, just across a thin strait of ocean from Sri Lanka.

“LIKE A SPOILED CHILD”

Back in 2005, Zahran was looking to make his way in the world. His hometown of Kattankudy is some seven hours’ drive from Colombo on the other side of the island nation, past the countless palm trees, roadside Buddha statues, cashew hawkers and an occasional lumbering elephant in the bush. It is a town of about 40,000 people, a dot on the eastern coast with no clear future for an impoverished young man who’d just been expelled.

Zahran joined a mosque in 2006, the Dharul Athar, and gained a place on its management committee. But within three years they’d had a falling out.

“He wanted to speak more independently, without taking advice from elders,” said the mosque’s imam, or spiritual leader, M.T.M. Fawaz.

Also, the young man was more conservative, Fawaz said, objecting, for instance, to women wearing bangles or earrings.

“The rest of us come together as community leaders but Zahran wanted to speak for himself,” said Fawaz, a man with broad shoulders lounging with a group of friends in a back office of the mosque after evening prayers. “He was a black sheep who broke free.”

Mohamed Yusuf Mohamed Thaufeek, a friend who met Zahran at school and later became an adherent of his, said the problems revolved around Zahran’s habit of misquoting Islamic scriptures.

The mosque’s committee banned him from preaching for three months in 2009. Zahran stormed off.

“We treated him like a spoiled child, a very narrow-minded person who was always causing some trouble,” said the head of the committee, Mohamed Ismail Mohamed Naushad, a timber supplier who shook his head at the memory.

Now on his own, Zahran began to collect a group of followers who met in what Fawaz described as “a hut”.

At about that time, Zahran, then 23, married a young girl from a small town outside the capital of Colombo and brought his bride back to Kattankudy, according to his sister, Mathaniya.

“I didn’t have much of a connection with her – she was 14,” she said.

Despite being “a bit rough-edged”, Zahran was a skilled speaker and others his age were drawn to his speeches and Koranic lessons, said Thaufeek. He traveled the countryside at times, giving his version of religious instruction as he went.

Also, Zahran had found a popular target: the town’s Sufi population, who practice a form of Islam often described a mystical, but which to conservatives is heresy.

Tensions in the area went back some years. In 2004, there was a grenade attack on a Sufi mosque and in 2006 several homes of Sufis were set afire. Announcements boomed from surrounding mosques at the time calling for a Sufi spiritual leader to be killed, said Sahlan Khalil Rahman, secretary of a trust that oversees a group of Sufi mosques.

He blamed followers of the fundamentalist Wahhabi strain of Islam that some locals say became more popular after funding from Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Wahhabism, flowed to mosques in Kattankudy.

It was, Rahman said, an effort “to convert Sufis into Wahhabis through this terrorism”. Rahman handed over a photograph album showing charred homes, bullet holes sprayed across an office wall and a shrine’s casket upended.

ONLINE RADICAL

It was an ideal backdrop for Zahran’s bellicose delivery and apparent sense of religious destiny.

He began holding rallies, bellowing insults through loudspeakers that reverberated inside the Sufis’ house of worship as they tried to pray.

In 2012, Zahran started a mosque of his own. The Sufis were alarmed and, Rahman said, passed on complaints to both local law enforcement and eventually national government offices. No action was taken.

The then-officer in charge of Kattankudy police, Ariyabandhu Wedagedara, said in a telephone interview that he couldn’t arrest people simply because of theological differences.

     “The problem at the time was between followers of different Islamic sects – Zahran was not a major troublemaker, but he and followers of other sects, including the Sufis, were at loggerheads,” Wedagedara said.

Zahran found another megaphone: the internet. His Facebook page was taken down after the bombings, but Muslims in the area said his video clips had previously achieved notoriety.

His speeches went from denouncing Sufis to “kafirs”, or non-believers, in general. Zahran’s sister, Mathaniya, said in an interview that she thought “his ideas became more radical from listening to Islamic State views on the Internet”.

In one undated video, Zahran, in a white tunic and standing in front of an image of flames, boomed in a loud voice: “You will not have time to pick up the remains of blown-up bodies. We’ll keep sending those insulting Allah to hell.”

“HARD TO TAKE”

Zahran spoke in Tamil, making his words available to young Muslims clicking on their cellphones in Kattankudy and other towns like it during a period when, in both 2014 and 2018, reports and images spread of Sinhalese Buddhists rioting against Muslims in Sri Lanka.

In 2017, Zahran’s confrontations boiled over. At a rally near a Sufi community, his followers came wielding swords. At least one man was hacked and hospitalized. The police arrested several people connected to Zahran, including his father and one of his brothers. Zahran slipped away from public view.

That December, the mosque Zahran founded released a public notice disowning him. Thaufeek, his friend from school, is now the head. He counted the places that Zahran had been driven away from – his school, the Dharul Athar mosque and then, “we ourselves kicked him out, which would have been hard for him to take”.

The next year, a group of Buddha statues was vandalized in the town of Mawanella, about five hours drive from Kattankudy. There, in the lush mountains of Sri Lanka’s interior, Zahran had taken up temporary residence.

“He was preaching to kill people,” said A.G.M. Anees, who has served as an imam at a small mosque in the area for a decade. “This is not Islam, this is violence.”

Zahran went into hiding once more.

On the Thursday morning before the Easter Sunday bombings, Zahran’s sister-in-law knocked on the door of a neighbor who did seamstress work near Kattankudy. She handed over a parcel of fabric and asked for it to be sewn into a tunic by the end of the day.

“She said she was going on a family trip,” said the neighbor, M.H. Sithi Nazlya.

Zahran’s sister says that her parents turned off their cellphones on the Friday. On Sunday, when she visited their home, they were gone.

She does not know if Zahran arranged for them to be taken somewhere safe. Or why he would have carried out the bombing.

But now in Kattankudy, and in many other places, people are talking about Mohamed Hashim Mohamed Zahran.

(Reporting by Tom Lasseter and Shri Navaratnam; Additional reporting by Sanjeev Miglani, Shihar Aneez and Alasdair Pal; Editing by John Chalmers and Alex Richardson)

Source: OANN

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