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Financial Times reaches a million paying readers

FILE PHOTO: The cover of the Financial Times newspaper is seen with other papers at a news stand in New York
FILE PHOTO: The cover of the Financial Times newspaper is seen with other papers at a news stand in New York U.S., November 9, 2016. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton/File Photo

April 1, 2019

LONDON (Reuters) – The Financial Times has reached a milestone of a million paying readers, it said on Monday, with revenues and profits continuing to rise since the London-based business publication was acquired by Japan’s Nikkei from Pearson in 2015.

The FT was one of the first newspapers to introduce a paywall, in 2002, charging online readers for news they had come to expect for free on the internet in a trend that challenged the business model of printed news media.

The New York Times followed in 2011 following years of debate and in November said it had more than 3 million paying digital-only subscribers and more than 4 million subscribers in total, including the print edition.

The FT’s digital subscribers account for more than three-quarters of its circulation. The pink-paged print edition continues to be profitable, the FT said.

It established a metered access model in 2007, requiring users to register and charging them if they read more than a certain number per month, before switching to paid trials as its primary pay model in 2015, in which readers would get access to most FT content for a month for a small sum.

The FT’s operating profit was 25 million pounds ($33 million) in 2018 and operating revenue was 383 million.

“We have proved that quality journalism can be a quality, growth business. We have also shown the enduring value of independent, authoritative and reliable reporting and analysis,” the FT’s Chief Executive John Ridding said in a statement.

(Reporting by Georgina Prodhan; Editing by Keith Weir)

Source: OANN

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Arab leaders meet in Tunisia with eye on Trump’s Golan move

Arab leaders are meeting in Tunisia's capital hoping to project unified opposition to President Donald Trump's recognition of Israel's sovereignty over the occupied Golan Heights.

The annual Arab League summit is taking place Sunday. The leaders of Algeria, Sudan and Morocco have announced they are skipping the meeting.

Arab League spokesman Mahmoud Afifi says the 22-member bloc will aim to issue a proclamation affirming the international consensus that the Golan is occupied Syrian land.

The annual gathering will also look into readmitting Syria's membership in the Arab League, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Saudi Arabia-Iran rivalry and the war in Yemen.

The pan-Arab bloc froze Syria's membership in 2011 over a bloody government crackdown on protesters.

Many Arab countries have recently renewed ties with the government of President Bashar Assad.

Source: Fox News World

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Judge orders mental health tests for accused mosque shooter

A New Zealand judge on Friday ordered that the man accused of killing 50 people at two Christchurch mosques undergo two mental health assessments to determine if he's fit to stand trial.

High Court judge Cameron Mander made the order during a hearing in which 28-year-old Australian Brenton Harrison Tarrant appeared via video link from a small room in a maximum security prison in Auckland.

Tarrant was wearing handcuffs and a gray-colored sweater when he appeared on a large screen inside the Christchurch courtroom, which was packed with family members and victims of the shooting, some in wheelchairs and hospital gowns and still recovering from gunshot wounds.

Tarrant had stubble and close-cropped hair. He showed no emotion during the hearing. At times he looked around the room or cocked his head, seemingly to better hear what was being said.

He spoke only once to confirm to the judge he was seated, although his voice didn't come through because the sound was muted. It wasn't immediately clear if his link had been deliberately or inadvertently muted.

Mander said nothing should be read into his order for the mental health assessments, as it was a normal step in such a case. Lawyers said it could take two or three months to complete.

The courtroom was filled with more than two dozen reporters and about 60 members of the public. A court registrar greeted people in Arabic and English as the hearing got underway. Some of those watching got emotional and wept.

The judge said Tarrant was charged with 50 counts of murder and 39 counts of attempted murder. Police initially filed a single, representative murder charge before filing the additional charges this week.

In the March 15 attacks, 42 people were killed at the Al Noor mosque, seven were killed at the Linwood mosque and one more person died later.

Outside the courtroom, Yama Nabi, whose father died in the attacks, said he felt helpless watching.

"We just have to sit in the court and listen," Nabi said. "What can we do? We can't do nothing. Just leave it to the justice of New Zealand and the prime minister."

Tofazzal Alam, 25, said he was worshipping at the Linwood mosque when the gunman attacked. He felt it was important to attend the hearing because so many of his friends were killed.

Alam said he felt upset seeing Tarrant.

"It seems he don't care what has been done. He has no emotion. He looks all right," Alam said. "I feel sorry. Sorry for myself. Sorry for my friends who have been killed. And for him."

Source: Fox News World

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Argentina peso weakens to new record low on economic uncertainty

FILE PHOTO: A man shows Argentine pesos outside a bank in Buenos Aires' financial district
FILE PHOTO: A man shows Argentine pesos outside a bank in Buenos Aires' financial district, Argentina August 30, 2018. REUTERS/Marcos Brindicci/File Photo

April 5, 2019

BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) – Argentina’s peso weakened 1.32 percent to touch a record low of 44.0 per U.S. dollar, traders said on Friday, as political and economic uncertainty to put pressure on the local currency.

The peso later regained some strength, but nonetheless ended the day at an all-time low close of 43.97 to the greenback.

The economy has been racked by recession and high inflation as President Mauricio Macri, a favorite among investors for his free-market policies, loses popularity ahead of his October re-election bid. Voters have been hit by public utility subsidy cuts and other austerity measures ordered by Macri as part of his effort at erasing the primary fiscal deficit.

(Reporting by Jorge Otaola and Walter Bianchi; Writing by Hugh Bronstein; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)

Source: OANN

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Trump likely to veto lawmakers’ measure against border wall Friday: sources

U.S. President Trump speaks while meeting with Ireland's Prime Minister Varadkar at the White House in Washington
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks while meeting with Ireland's Prime Minister (Taoiseach) Leo Varadkar in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, U.S., March 14, 2019. REUTERS/Jim Young

March 15, 2019

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump is likely to sign a veto of the congressional measure to end his emergency declaration to get funds to build a border wall around 3:00 p.m. on Friday, according to sources familiar with the matter.

The veto would be the first of Trump’s presidency. On Thursday, Democrats and Republicans rebuked Trump over his decision to circumvent Congress and take money already designated for other programs to pay for his barrier along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Trump has said he wants a wall to prevent immigrants from crossing into the United States, describing the situation as a national emergency. Democrats deny there is an emergency at the border, saying border crossings are at a four-decade low.

The Republican-controlled U.S. Senate voted to end his border emergency declaration, with 12 of Trump’s fellow Republicans joining Democrats. The numbers did not make it to the level required to override a veto, meaning Trump would secure his plans despite congressional disapproval.

The president made a border wall a central promise of his 2016 campaign for the White House. He initially insisted that Mexico would pay for the wall but it has declined to do so. Last year, Trump forced a government shutdown over an impasse with Congress over funding for the barrier.

When a deal to prevent another shutdown did not give him the funding he requested, Trump declared a national emergency, redirecting funds that were allocated for other projects to build the barrier instead.

(Reporting by Jeff Mason; editing by Grant McCool)

Source: OANN

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GOP Sen. John Kennedy: 'No Sympathy' for 'Sleaze' Manafort

There was not any evidence of collusion with Russia in connection with President Donald Trump's campaign manager Paul Manafort's conviction, but Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., said Wednesday his offenses are still serious and he does not feel sorry for him.

"Mr. Manafort was convicted of bank fraud and tax fraud," Sen. Kennedy told Fox News' "America's Newsroom" before Manafort was to be sentenced in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. "There was no evidence of any collusion with Russia or any of that, but bank and tax fraud are serious offenses against the American people and he always played on the margins."

Further, Kennedy said he thinks he has called Manafort a "sleaze" in the past, and "he is. I don't have any sympathy for him."

Kennedy also said Wednesday he found revelations in testimony documents released by House Judiciary Committee Republicans from last year's questioning of former FBI attorney Lisa Page "disgusting."

"Ninety-nine percent of the men and women at the FBI and at Justice are good people," said Kennedy, "but you've got a 99 small minority over there, or you did, maybe you still do, most of them appear to be anti-Trump though I'm sure there are some anti-[Hillary] Clinton but they'll act from their political beliefs. Then they want to go out and sell books."

Deputy FBI Director Andy McCabe, in particular, "acts like butter wouldn't melt in his mouth," but everyone forgets he was fired for lying to the FBI, Kennedy said.

Source: NewsMax America

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'Heartbeat' bills gaining momentum in several states, including Kentucky and Mississippi

Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant has vowed to sign a "heartbeat" abortion bill that was passed by state legislators last Wednesday. Kentucky passed a similar bill a day later. And Texas state lawmakers are also pushing to advance a similar bill in the coming weeks or months.

As both sides of the abortion debate are preparing for the possibility -- however remote -- of Roe v. Wade being overturned, at least 10 states are currently considering or have passed "heartbeat bills," which prohibit an abortion after a fetal heartbeat is detected, which can be as early as six weeks of gestation or as late as 12 weeks.

While it's unclear whether the bills will withstand court challenges -- similar proposals have been struck down by judges because of Roe v. Wade -- lawmakers are pursuing them in case the 1973 Supreme Court ruling is reversed.

In Mississippi, Bryant trumpeted state lawmakers for passing a bill he hopes will be mirrored across the country.

ABORTION SURVIVORS ON NEW LATE-TERM ABORTION BILLS: 'WHERE WERE MY RIGHTS IN THE WOMB?'

"I’ve often said I want Mississippi to be the safest place for an unborn child in America," Bryant wrote on Twitter. "We will stand for life here in the Magnolia State and hope the rest of the nation follows."

Florida, Maryland, Minnesota, Mississipi, Missouri, Ohio, South Carolina and West Virginia are among the states that have either passed "heartbeat" legislation or are hoping to do so. This comes as states like New York, New Mexico, Maryland, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Virginia, among other Democratic-leaning states, are supporting bills that allow abortion up to the moment of birth.

The bills on both sides of the issue have become politically, and emotionally, charged.

In Kentucky, a pregnant woman, April Lanham, sat as a witness in support of the bill while the audience listened to her preborn child's heartbeat via an electronic monitor.

April Lanham, center, undergoes a procedure in Frankfort, Ky., that allows the audience at a Kentucky legislative meeting to hear her unborn son's heartbeat, Thursday, Feb. 14, 2019 in Frankfort, Ky. Her appearance came shortly before a Kentucky Senate committee advanced a bill that would ban most abortions in the state once a fetal heartbeat is detected. (Tom Latek/Kentucky Today via AP)

April Lanham, center, undergoes a procedure in Frankfort, Ky., that allows the audience at a Kentucky legislative meeting to hear her unborn son's heartbeat, Thursday, Feb. 14, 2019 in Frankfort, Ky. Her appearance came shortly before a Kentucky Senate committee advanced a bill that would ban most abortions in the state once a fetal heartbeat is detected. (Tom Latek/Kentucky Today via AP)

"That child in her womb is a living human being," State Sen. Matt Castlen, a sponsor of the bill, said. "And all living human beings have a right to life."

WOMEN'S RIGHTS GROUPS SUPPORT LATE-TERM ABORTION, DESPITE OUTCRY

But critics say the bills will not hold up in court. In Arkansas, Iowa, and North Dakota, federal judges found similar bills "unconstitutional."

In Mississippi, while the "heartbeat" bill was being debated, Democratic State Sen. Derrick Simmons asked if it was worth the money to fight this bill in court, referencing the state spending $1.2 million over a 15-week abortion ban that a district judge found unconstitutional. His Republican colleague, State Sen. Michael Watson, responded: "What is a life worth?"

DEM CO-SPONSOR OF LATE-TERM ABORTION BILL APOLOGIZES, SAYS SHE DID NOT READ THE TEXT

Ohio was the first state to introduce the so-called "heartbeat bill" in 2011, and after being revived last year was vetoed by then-Gov. John Kasich late in December. The current governor, Mike DeWine, has vowed to sign the legislation that is expected to pass in March. He said he believes it will be ultimately be decided by the Supreme Court.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

The heartbeat bills prohibit abortion as early as six weeks. Roe v. Wade's ruling allows abortions until 24 weeks, which the justices said is the "point of viability," when the fetus can survive outside of the womb.

OB/GYN: 'ABSOLUTELY NO REASON TO KILL A BABY' IN 3RD TRIMESTER

Florida's version redefines a fetus as an "unborn human being," would make it a third-degree felony to perform an abortion after a fetal heartbeat is detected. Gov. Ron DeSantis has vowed he will sign the legislation if it passes this spring.

Anti-abortion advocates believe they have a better chance at the Supreme Court following President Trump's appointment of Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.

Source: Fox News Politics

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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].”

CLICK HERE FOR THE FOX NEWS APP

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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