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Biden running ‘dishonest’ campaign, Sanders a ‘romantic figure,’ Mark Steyn tells Tucker

Conservative columnist Mark Steyn on Thursday outlined the difference between Democratic presidential frontrunners Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, saying that Biden is being forced to run a "dishonest" race while Sanders has been 'romanticized' by the "new" Democratic Party.

"I don't think it's his skin color or his age," Steyn said of Biden on Fox News' "Tucker Carlson Tonight," "because as much as I enjoy hearing all these people beat up on a 76-year-old white man, his principal rival in the Democratic primary is a 77-year-old white man.

JOE BIDEN OFFICIALLY LAUNCHES 2020 PRESIDENTIAL BID

"And the difference between them," Steyn told host Tucker Carlson, "I think is that Bernie is a romance for his supporters. He is a romantic figure, a romantic, insane figure, but he is a romantic."

Biden formally announced his candidacy with a video posted Thursday morning.

"The core values of this nation, our standing in the world, our very democracy, everything that has made America -- America -- is at stake. That’s why today I’m announcing my candidacy for president of the United States," Biden added in a Twitter message.

Steyn said Biden has been "disowned" by his own party and seems like he's now trying to be someone other than the politician he has been his entire career.

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"Biden is tired and in the awful position of being unable to run as himself, because the Democrats have basically disowned 90 percent of what Joe Biden has been doing in Washington the last 45 years," Steyn said.

"So that's a terrible problem for a guy, when you have to run in an essentially dishonest way, which is why he gave this a tortured and weird rationale as to why he has decided to get into the race in this video.

"Bernie has it way easier," Steyn added. "Bernie just gets to be Bernie, and Biden is trying to be something other than Biden."

Source: Fox News Politics

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China makes major U.S. pork purchase despite steep import tariffs, as hog virus takes toll

FILE PHOTO: Workers cut pork at Park Packing -- one of the Chicago's few remaining slaughterhouses -- in Chicago
FILE PHOTO: Workers cut pork at Park Packing -- one of the Chicago's few remaining slaughterhouses -- in Chicago, Illinois July 18, 2015. REUTERS/Karl Plume

March 14, 2019

By Tom Polansek

CHICAGO (Reuters) – China made its biggest purchases of U.S. pork in nearly two years last week, U.S. Department of Agriculture data showed on Thursday, as Chinese hog prices surged after an outbreak of a deadly swine disease.

Buyers in the world’s biggest hog producer and pork consumer struck deals for the meat despite import tariffs of 62 percent imposed by China on U.S. pork as a consequence of the trade war between the two countries.

The duties had slashed China’s imports of U.S. pork from companies such as WH Group Ltd’s Smithfield Foods since last summer.

The sale of 23,846 tonnes of U.S pork in the week ended March 7 comes after a months-long outbreak of African swine fever in China that has spread to 111 confirmed cases in 28 provinces and regions across the country since August 2018.

There is no cure and no vaccine for the disease, which does not affect humans but is highly contagious and fatal to pigs. About 1 million pigs have been reportedly culled so far in an effort to try to contain the disease.

“They are going to need pork and lots of it,” Dennis Smith, a commodity broker for Archer Financial Services in Chicago, said about China.

The sales were the biggest to China since April 2017 and the third largest since the USDA began tracking pork export sales in 2013.

The USDA did not immediately respond to a request for comment about pork sales to China. Officials have previously said China may be underreporting hog deaths from African swine fever.

China also recently resumed purchases of other U.S. farm products, including soybeans and sorghum, that face retaliatory import tariffs.

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday the United States was doing well in trade talks with China, but that he could not say whether a final deal would be reached.

Bob Brown, an independent U.S. livestock analyst, said U.S. pork prices have declined enough to offset Beijing’s tariffs.

“If they needed the stuff, we were the cheapest by far,” he said.

Chicago Mercantile Exchange May hog futures fell to a contract low last month. On Thursday, the contract reached its highest price in more than two months, supported by increasing concerns about African swine fever in China.

Chinese hog prices reached their highest in 14 months on Monday.

“Certainly there’s been a lot of focus on what hog prices are doing in China,” said Altin Kalo, agricultural economist for New Hampshire-based Steiner Consulting.

(Reporting by Tom Polansek; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)

Source: OANN

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Report: Man arrested near border faced similar weapon charge

A New Mexico man who is a member of an armed civilian group that has detained migrants near the U.S.-Mexico border and was arrested on suspicion of being a felon in possession of firearms reportedly faced similar charges 13 years ago in Oregon.

Larry Mitchell Hopkins, 69, also was accused of impersonating a police officer in Oregon's Klamath County in 2006 and claimed to be a fugitive bounty hunter, the Santa Few New Mexican reported Sunday.

The FBI and Sunland Park police arrested Hopkins on a federal complaint Saturday.

Hopkins was booked into the Dona Ana County detention center in Las Cruces and it wasn't immediately known if he had an attorney who could comment on the allegations.

The FBI said Hopkins is from Flora Vista, a rural community in northern New Mexico and approximately 353 miles (572 kilometers) north of Sunland Park, a suburb of El Paso, Texas.

Frank Fisher, a spokesman for the FBI in Albuquerque, said additional information about Hopkins would not be released until after his initial appearance Monday in a Las Cruces federal court.

In 2006, a Klamath County Sheriff's Office report said Hopkins was found at a gas station in Keno, Oregon, showing firearms to youth and telling them he was a police officer.

Hopkins displayed a badge that said "special agent" and numerous medals pinned to his shirt, according to the report obtained by the Santa Fe New Mexican.

The newspaper said the court records were uncovered by the Southern Poverty Law Center which monitors hate groups and extremists in the U.S.

In his guilty plea in the case, records show Hopkins acknowledged to the court that he had given "the impression to others that I was a peace officer" while unlawfully carrying a firearm as a convicted felon.

Federal authorities on Friday warned private groups to avoid policing the border after a string of videos on social media showed armed civilians detaining large groups of Central American families in New Mexico.

Armed civilian groups have been a fixture on the border for years, especially when large numbers of migrants come. But, unlike previous times, many of the migrants crossing now are children.

Mexico's Foreign Relations Department, in a statement issued Saturday, expressed "profound concern at the activities of intimidation and extortion of migrants on the part of militia groups on the border of New Mexico ... These types of practices can lead to the trampling of human rights of people who migrate or who solicit asylum or refuge in the United States."

___

Information from: The Santa Fe New Mexican, http://www.santafenewmexican.com

Source: Fox News National

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German motor authority probes more Mercedes emissions software: Bild

The Daimler logo is seen before the Daimler annual shareholder meeting in Berlin,
The Daimler logo is seen before the Daimler annual shareholder meeting in Berlin, Germany, April 5, 2018. REUTERS/Hannibal Hanschke

April 14, 2019

BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany’s motor vehicle authority KBA is investigating Daimler on suspicion that 60,000 Mercedes cars were fitted with software aimed at tricking emissions tests, the Bild am Sonntag newspaper reported on Sunday.

A spokesman for Daimler, owner of Mercedes-Benz, said the carmaker was reviewing the facts and fully cooperating with the KBA.

Bild am Sonntag said the KBA was looking into suspicious software in Mercedes-Benz GLK 220 CDI cars produced between 2012 and 2015, after tests showed they only meet emissions limits when a certain function is activated.

Since rival Volkswagen admitted in 2015 to cheating U.S. emissions tests, the scandal has spread to other carmakers. Daimler has ordered the recall of 3 million vehicles to fix excess emissions coming from their diesel engines.

Bild am Sonntag said the KBA found that the function it had discovered had been removed during software updates carried out by Daimler.

The Daimler spokesman said the company had complied with a process agreed upon with the KBA and German Transport Ministry when updating software for the 3 million recalled vehicles.

“The allegation that we wanted to hide something with the voluntary service measure is incorrect,” he said.

This month European Union antitrust regulators charged BMW, Daimler and Volkswagen with colluding to block the rollout of emissions-cleaning technology.

(Reporting by Emma Thomasson; Editing by Susan Fenton)

Source: OANN

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Exclusive: Libya’s U.N.-backed government readies new war funding but hopes vital business to continue

Libyan Minister of Economy Ali Abdulaziz Issawi speaks during an interview with Reuters in Tripoli
Libyan Minister of Economy Ali Abdulaziz Issawi speaks during an interview with Reuters in Tripoli, Libya April 25, 2019. REUTERS/Hani Amara

April 26, 2019

By Ulf Laessing

TRIPOLI (Reuters) – Libya’s U.N.-recognized government has budgeted up to 2 billion dinars ($1.43 billion) to cover costs of a three-week-old war for control of the capital, such as treatment for the wounded, to be funded without new borrowing, the economy minister said.

Ali Abdulaziz Issawi suggested the government hoped for business to continue more or less as usual despite the assault on Tripoli, in the country’s northwest, by forces tied to a parallel administration based in the eastern city of Benghazi.

Once Africa’s third largest producer of oil, Libya has been riven by factional conflict since the fall of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, with the country now broadly split between eastern-based forces under Khalifa Haftar and the U.N.-backed government in Tripoli, in the west, under Prime Minister Fayez al-Serraj.

Still, with Haftar’s Libyan National Army forces unable so far to pierce defenses in Tripoli’s southern suburbs, normal life and business activities continue in much of the capital and western coastal towns.

Issawi, in an interview with Reuters in his Tripoli office, also said Libya’s commercial ports and wheat imports were still functioning normally, although some roads have been blocked.

He said the Serraj government estimates it will spend up to 2 billion dinars extra on medical treatment for wounded, aid for displaced people and other “emergency” war costs.

He said this was not military spending but analysts believe that the sum will also cover expenditures such as pay for allied armed groups or food for fighters.

“We could actually spend less,” he added, in comments that gave the first insight into the economic impact of the fighting.

Issawi said the Tripoli government, which controls little territory beyond the greater capital region, would not incur new debt to fund the war costs, sticking to a plan to post a 2019 budget without a deficit.

Tripoli derives revenue largely from oil and natural gas production, interest-free loans from local banks to the central bank, and a 183 percent surcharge on foreign exchange transactions conducted at official rates.

But with centralized tax collection greatly diminished, public debt has piled up – to 68 billion dinars in the west, including unpaid state obligations such as social insurance.

Some analysts expect Serraj’s government will be forced to raise new debt if the war for control of Tripoli drags on.

With much of Libya dominated by armed factions that also act as security forces, the public wage bill for both the western and eastern administrations has soared as fighters have been made public employees in efforts to buy their loyalty.

The east has sold bonds worth 35 billion dinars outside the official financial system as the Tripoli central bank does not fund the parallel government apart from some wages.

Despite its limited reach, the Tripoli government still runs an annual budget of around 46.8 billion dinars, mainly for public salaries and fuel subsidies.

“This year we cannot finance via debt…we will not borrow (by agreement with the central bank),” Issawi said.

According to International Monetary Fund data, Libya’s central government debt-to-GDP ratio is 143 percent, making it one of the most heavily indebted in the world on that measure.

Issawi declined to say what parts of the budget would be trimmed to support the extra outlay for war costs.

However, with some 70 percent of the budget allocated to public wages, fuel subsidies and other welfare benefits, a portion devoted to infrastructure is most likely to be axed.

Widespread lawlessness has meant there have been no major infrastructural projects since 2011, when a NATO-backed uprising overthrew dictator Muammar Gaddafi, leaving schools, hospitals and roads in acute need of restoration.

FOREX SURCHARGE

Issawi said the government planned to raise as much as 30 billion dinars by the end of 2019 from hard currency deals after imposing in September a 183 percent surcharge on commercial and private transactions done on the official rate of 1.4 to the U.S. dollar. That fee has effectively devalued the official rate to 3.9, much closer to the black market equivalent.

Some 17 billion dinars have been raised since then, with hard currency allocated for import credit letters now issued without delays, Issawi said. The forex fee has helped the government forecast a budget in the black for 2019.

Despite the narrowing spread between the two rates, the black market continues to thrive. Dozens of traders remained at their favorite spot behind the central bank headquarters in Tripoli when Reuters reporters visited it last week.

But traders said it could take time for the Serraj government to register the extra forex receipts as official banking channels were taking up to six months to approve import financing, keeping the black market in play for dealers.

Issawi said authorities planned to lower the forex fee from 183 percent, without saying when. The black market rate has dropped from 6 to around 4.1 since September but it has hardly moved of late as demand for black market cash remains high.

The Tripoli government has stopped subsidizing food and bread, which used to be cheaper than drinking water in Libya. Wheat imports are now being arranged by private traders and there are surplus stocks of flour at the moment, Issawi said.

(Reporting by Ulf Laessing in Tripoli with additional reporting by Karin Strohecker in London; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Source: OANN

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Prosecutors Say Avenatti Wanted in on NY Sex-Slave Case

An already bizarre case accusing a secretive self-help group in upstate New York of engaging in sex-trafficking took another strange turn Wednesday thanks to firebrand attorney Michael Avenatti and a courtroom scene caused by a wealthy defendant he's tried to represent.

At a hearing in federal court in Brooklyn, prosecutors confirmed that Avenatti appeared on behalf of liquor fortune heiress Clare Bronfman at a closed-door meeting last week that also included Mark Geragos, another high-profile lawyer representing Bronfman.

When U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis asked Geragos whether he and Avenatti had told prosecutors Avenatti was being brought into the case, he responded, "That's exactly what happened."

The revelation came only two days after Avenatti, the lawyer best known for representing porn actress Stormy Daniels, was arrested on charges accusing him of trying to extort millions of dollars from Nike. He wasn't in court Wednesday and didn't immediately respond to messages seeking comment.

Geragos has been linked to the Nike case by reports naming him as the unidentified co-conspirator mentioned in court papers. Asked outside court Wednesday if he was cooperating in the case, he said no, but declined comment on whether he was the alleged co-conspirator.

Bronfman, a daughter of the late billionaire philanthropist and former Seagram chairman Edgar Bronfman Sr., has pleaded not guilty to charges accusing her of bank-rolling a cult-like organization that brainwashed and branded women who served as sex slaves for its spiritual leader.

Under stern questioning by the judge Wednesday about which lawyers are actually representing her and whether she knew if Geragos was involved in the Nike case, Bronfman turned pale, staggered away from the bench and collapsed into a chair. An ambulance was called, but she later left the courthouse on the arm of Geragos.

The judge adjourned the hearing but told lawyers Bronfman would need to come back to court Thursday to give some answers.

"You're going to tell me who the lawyers are," he said. "You're going to tell me when they were retained."

Source: NewsMax America

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New Zealand politician punched in face while walking to work

A New Zealand government minister said he was punched in the face Thursday while walking to work in an attack that's rare in a country where politicians often mingle with the public in stores, bars and sports arenas.

James Shaw, the Climate Change Minister and co-leader of the Green Party, was walking past Wellington's Botanic Garden just before 8 a.m. when a man started talking to him before grabbing him and punching him several times, said Shaw's press secretary, Peter Stevens.

Stevens said two people came along to help and the man jumped in a car and drove away. Shaw suffered a black eye and grazes on his wrist and was being assessed at Wellington Hospital, Stevens said.

Police said a 47-year-old man has been arrested.

New Zealand's Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said she'd spoken with Shaw soon after the attack and he'd told her he was doing fine. She told him to take whatever time he needed to recover and her thoughts were with him and his wife.

"When you go into politics in New Zealand you just don't expect these things to happen, and I know it will be especially challenging for loved ones," Ardern said in a statement.

She said she couldn't say much more about the attack as it was the subject of a police investigation.

"We have an environment in New Zealand where politicians are accessible, and that's something we should feel proud of," Ardern said. "We are, after all, here to serve people. But today's events really show we cannot take that for granted."

New Zealand historically has had few instances of terrorism or politically motivated crimes. Among politicians, typically only the prime minister gets round-the-clock protection from the Diplomatic Protection Service, while others might get temporary protection during election campaigns or when needed.

Stevens, the press secretary, said Shaw was walking with his headphones on listening to music when the man approached. The attacker seemed to recognize Shaw, he said, but the conversation was brief and somewhat random. He said Shaw asked the man to let go of him before he was punched.

"He's feeling a bit tender and a bit shaken up," Stevens said.

Stevens said Shaw was very grateful for the people who helped intervene and for police and ambulance crews who arrived quickly.

Source: Fox News World

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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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