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Zimbabwe reaches agreement with IMF on economic reform program

Workers harvest tobacco at a farm outside Harare
Workers harvest tobacco at a farm outside Harare, Zimbabwe, February 20, 2019. REUTERS/Mike Hutchings

April 11, 2019

HARARE (Reuters) – Zimbabwe has reached agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on a program of economic policies and structural reforms that could pave the way to the crisis-hit country re-engaging with international financial institutions.

Suffering from decades of decline and hyperinflation, Zimbabwe has not been able to borrow from international lenders since 1999, when it started defaulting on its debt. It has arrears of around $2.2 billion with the World Bank, the African Development Bank and European Investment Bank.

“Zimbabwe is facing deep macroeconomic imbalances, with large fiscal deficits and significant distortions in foreign exchange and other markets, which severely hamper the functioning of the economy,” Gene Leon, leader of the IMF staff team, said in a statement.

Zimbabwe is also facing the challenge of responding to drought and the devastation from Cyclone Idai, Leon said.

Under the agreement with the IMF, policies will focus on eliminating the government’s double-digit fiscal deficit and adoption of reforms to allow market forces to drive the functioning of foreign exchange and other financial markets.

Leon said the agreed policies can be expected to remove distortions that have held back private sector growth, but gave no specific targets for the reduction of the deficit or other objectives.

He also did not say if and when any fresh IMF financial support would be forthcoming.

Zimbabwe had on Tuesday appealed for $613 million in aid from local and foreign donors to cover food imports and help with a humanitarian crisis following Cyclone Idai.

Leon had met with Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube, Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) Governor John Mangudya and other officials in a continuation of talks which aim to implement a set of policies facilitating a return to economic stability.

Leon said in a statement released late on Wednesday the agreement is subject to review by the IMF’s management.

“Successful implementation … will assist in building a track record and facilitate Zimbabwe’s reengagement with the international community,” said Leon.

The IMF said in its world economic outlook this week that Zimbabwe’s economy will contract 5.2 percent this year. This would be the first time that the economy will go into recession since 2008, when the economy shrank by 16.5 percent at the height of hyperinflation.

(Reporting by Nqobile Dludla; Additional reporting by MacDonald Dzirutwe; Editing by David Holmes)

Source: OANN

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Bobcat survives deadly California wildfire, has 4 kittens

A young bobcat that survived a massive and deadly wildfire in Southern California last year has given birth to four kittens, wildlife officials said Friday.

Biologists recently found the bobcat's den in dense vegetation in a large residential backyard in Westlake Village just northwest of Los Angeles, according to officials with the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area.

While their mother was away, the biologists weighed, measured and tagged one male and three female kittens. They also gave them a general health check-up.

The kittens are about four weeks old and each weigh about a 1 pound, or half a kilogram.

Their mother, B-362, was tagged the day before the start of last year's Woolsey Fire, which destroyed 1,600 structures and left three people dead. She had been captured in an area of Thousand Oaks that was gutted by the blaze.

"This cat first had to deal with her habitat getting completely burned in the fire and then finding a new home in an unburned area," biologist Joanne Moriarty said in a statement. "She chose a den in thick brush where she could keep her kittens safe."

Though last year's fires have made it a stressful time for wildlife, "we're happy to see her thriving," Moriarty said.

Another female bobcat being studied by the biologists has remained in the burn area but hasn't reproduced.

Biologists say that bobcats will keep their kittens in their dens until they're about three months old, when they'll begin following her as she hunts and goes about her day. Bobcats generally become independent at nine to 11 months old.

Last month, a male bobcat known as B-361 was killed by a car in Calabasas, the second most common cause of death among the population after mange, according to the National Park Service.

Source: Fox News National

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Monitor says Thai election campaign ‘heavily tilted’ to benefit junta

Thailand's Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha arrives to attend a weekly cabinet meeting days after the general election, at Government House in Bangkok
Thailand's Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha arrives to attend a weekly cabinet meeting days after the general election, at Government House in Bangkok, Thailand, March 26, 2019. REUTERS/Athit Perawongmetha

March 26, 2019

By Patpicha Tanakasempipat and Juarawee Kittisilpa

BANGKOK (Reuters) – The run-up to Thailand’s weekend vote was “heavily tilted” to benefit a party close to the ruling military junta, an Asian election monitor said on Tuesday, and criticized a messy ballot-counting process that created mistrust.

Persistent confusion about results two days after Sunday’s vote have diminished hopes that the first election since a 2014 military coup would end nearly 15 years of political turmoil in Southeast Asia’s second-largest economy.

The Bangkok-based Asian Network for Free Elections (ANFREL) stopped short of declaring outright fraud in the election, in which both a pro-junta party and an opposition party linked to a self-exiled former premier have claimed victory.

“The environment at large is heavily tilted to benefit the military junta,” Amaël Vier, an official of the civil society group that seeks to promote democratic elections, told a news briefing.

“A lot of people still express distrust towards the electoral process.”

Asked if the election had been free and fair, another ANFREL official declined to comment directly, however.

“So many things have to be considered together,” said its mission head, Rohana Nishanta Hettiarachchie. “It is unfair to conclude that the whole process was free and fair or not.”

Thailand’s Election Commission was not immediately available for comment. It has previously declined to comment on accusations of cheating.

With only partial results reported, the party backing junta leader Prayuth Chan-ocha has said it is gathering coalition partners to form a government.

But the main opposition Pheu Thai party, loyal to ousted former premier Thaksin Shinawatra, has alleged “irregularities”, and is considering legal challenges, while also saying it is putting together a coalition government.

It could be days or even weeks before it is clear whether either Prayuth’s party or the “democratic front” has won enough seats to form a stable government.

Unofficial results for 350 directly elected “constituency seats” in the House of Representatives released on Monday by the Election Commission showed Pheu Thai leading with 137 seats, versus 97 seats for Prayuth’s party.

But official results, including 150 more “party seats”, would not be available until May 9, the election body said.

A fuller picture could emerge on Friday, when the election commission releases vote totals for each constituency, used to determine the allocation of party seats, in a complex formula.

Even before May 9, but parties are making their own calculations on the basis of partial results and seeking coalition partners to form a government.

The commission has blamed delays and irregularities in early partial results on “human error.”

Junta leader Prayuth, who as army chief seized power in 2014, is expected to speak later on Tuesday after a cabinet meeting.

Since 2004, Thailand has been racked by street protests organized by both opponents and supporters of Thaksin, occasionally spilling into violence.

Parties linked to Thaksin have won every election since 2001, but the populist telecoms billionaire was thrown out by the army in 2006, and a government led by his sister was ousted in 2014.

(Additional reporting by Panarat Thepgumpanat; Writing by Kay Johnson; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)

Source: OANN

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Bank of England likely to help economy after no-deal Brexit: Carney

Bank of England press conference
Bank of England Governor Mark Carney speaks at a press conference at the Bank of England in London, Britain February 25, 2019. Kirsty O'Connor/Pool via REUTERS

February 26, 2019

LONDON (Reuters) – Bank of England Governor Mark Carney said on Tuesday he expected the British central bank would provide more support for the economy in the event of a no-deal Brexit.

Carney said the BoE’s interest-rate setters had stressed that their response to the shock of a no-deal Brexit would not be automatic.

“As my colleague Gertjan Vlieghe has noted, that does not necessarily mean that, in the event of a no-deal, no-transition scenario, either direction of policy is equally likely,” Carney said in an annual report to lawmakers.

“Given the exceptional circumstance associated with Brexit, I would expect the Committee to provide whatever monetary support it can consistent with the price stability remit given to the Committee by Parliament. But there are clearly limits to its ability to do so.”

(Writing by William Schomberg)

Source: OANN

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What is ‘Democratic socialism’? Bernie Sanders’ political ideology explained

Once largely considered “taboo” and a “dirty word,” socialism — particularly, Democratic socialism — has seemingly started to trickle into the political mainstream in recent years, thanks, in part, to self-proclaimed Democratic socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

An August 2018 Gallup poll found Democrats had a “more positive image” of socialism than of capitalism, with 57 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents saying they had a positive view of socialism compared to 47 percent who had a positive view of capitalism.

Sanders will join Fox News Channel for a town hall co-anchored by Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum on Monday, April 15, at 6:30 p.m. ET in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

“Views of socialism among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents are particularly important in the current political environment because many observers have claimed the Democratic Party is turning in more of a socialist direction,” Gallup noted at the time.

3 BERNIE SANDERS POLICIES NOW EMBRACED BY THE DEMOCRATIC FIELD

Socialism — a term that first hatched in the early 19th century, per The Washington Post — has “meant different things to different people in different times and places, while maintaining a stable core of themes and objectives: social (as opposed to private) control of the means of production, and of all the societal, humanitarian and political-economic changes that entails, especially where the freedom and autonomy of working people are concerned,” Opinion columnist Elizabeth Bruenig wrote in August 2018.

But what exactly does it mean to be a Democratic socialist? And how have Ocasio-Cortez, Sanders and other politicians who align with the political philosophy describe its meaning to them?

Read on for a brief look Democratic socialism.

First, what is Democratic socialism?

Democratic socialism pulls from both Democracy and socialism, per the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) website. Political theorist and activist Michael Harrington helped form the DSA in 1982.

“Democratic socialists believe that both the economy and society should be run democratically — to meet public needs, not to make profits for a few,” the group states, noting to achieve a more “just society” many “structures of our government and economy must be radically transformed through greater economic and social democracy so that ordinary Americans can participate in the many decisions that affect our lives.”

Democratic socialists favor decentralization; they don’t necessarily want to create “an all-powerful government bureaucracy” but are not in favor of “big corporate bureaucracies to control our society either,” reads the website.

Those who align with the political ideology typically support pro-union politics, tuition-free public universities, universal healthcare and using tax money from the wealthy to fund social welfare programs, among other ideas, reported TIME in October 2018.

“[What they want] is not a violent overthrow of capitalism, but working within the system through legal and peaceful means [such as] electoral and social movements,” Maurice Isserman, a professor of History at Hamilton College, told the magazine at the time.

What issues are Democratic socialists focused on right now?

"Medicare for All," strong unions and electoral power are three of the DSA’s current campaigns.

What has Sanders said about being a Democratic socialist?

Sanders, a Democratic presidential candidate in 2016 and now one of the many vying for the Democratic presidential nomination for the 2020 election, explained what the political ideology means to him during a CNN town hall in February.

“These are not radical ideas,” said Sanders, 77.

“What democratic socialism means to me is having, in a civilized society, the understanding that we can make sure that all of our people live in security and in dignity,” he said. “All people should have health care. You can’t get ahead in this country, in this world, unless you have a decent education.”

"We have got to, as a right, end the kinds of discrimination — the racism, the sexism, and the homophobia — that exists. To me, when I talk about democratic socialism, what I talk about are human rights and economic rights,” he continued, before going on to list his policies — such as tuition-free public universities, raising the minimum wage and universal health care — he would enact if elected president.

What about other Democratic socialists like Ocasio-Cortez, Julia Salazar and Rashida Tlaib?

New York Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, 29, echoed Sanders when speaking to Business Insider in March.

"So when millennials talk about concepts like Democratic socialism, we're not talking about these kinds of 'Red Scare' boogeyman," she said. "We're talking about countries and systems that already exist that have already been proven to be successful in the modern world."

"We're talking about single-payer health care that has already been successful in many different models, from Finland to Canada to the UK," she added, before going on to say Democratic socialism enforces “basic levels of dignity so that no person in America is too poor to live.”

Julia Salazar, who represents New York’s 18th State Senate District, is also a self-proclaimed Democratic socialist, telling October, a beer-centric magazine, she has been a DSA member for two years and is “committed to trying to build Democratic socialism.”

On a personal level, Salazar, 28, said being a Democratic socialist “means fighting to make sure that every person is empowered to be able to determine their own destiny.”

“That all of us have access to not only basic needs, but to what we need to thrive in society. Housing is a human right, not something that should be at the mercy of the market. Health care is a human right, similarly, that shouldn’t be accessible only by income or status,” she added.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib, who represents Michigan’s 13th congressional district, has also spoken on the political ideology — telling In These Times in August of 2018 “it means a strong partner.”

“When I talk about equitable, just fairness, I lean on a whole group of people who understand just how much the structures in place are set up against the people, people of color, and the working class. It helps me have an organization and people to lean on. It’s important to have that kind of partnership,” Tlaib, 42, said.

Democratic socialism and American politics

Isserman told NPR in July 2018 “this is the most important moment in DSA history.”

The group has garnered an increasing amount of visibility in recent years, increasing from roughly 7,000 members to 50,00 since President Trump’s election in 2016, according to a 2018 Axios report.

The growing membership, combined with big wins for Democratic socialists are solid examples of the group’s “growing movement,” the publication added.

BERNIE SANDERS' BIGGEST STAR-STUDDED BACKERS: MARK RUFFALO, DANNY DEVITO AND OTHERS

Are there any models of Democratic socialism in the world today?

No country to-date has fully instituted Democratic socialism, per the DSA’s website, which noted some countries — Canada, Sweden and France, among others — have pulled from the political ideology in terms of health care, childcare and beyond.

Republicans, specifically, often refer to countries where socialism has arguably gone array — such as Zimbabwe and Venezuela, among others — to discredit some of the group’s ideologies.

“Critics say the U.S. would be a poorer, less efficient society,” Michael Kazin, a professor of history at Georgetown University, also told TIME.

Source: Fox News Politics

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Under pressure, Britain’s May scrambles to win support for Brexit deal

Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May and her husband Philip arrive at church in Sonning
Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May and her husband Philip arrive at church in Sonning, Britain March 17, 2019. REUTERS/Henry Nicholls

March 17, 2019

By Elizabeth Piper and Kate Holton

LONDON (Reuters) – British Prime Minister Theresa May’s government was scrambling on Sunday to get support in parliament for her Brexit deal at the third time of asking, aiming to persuade doubters with threats and promises to avoid any move to oust her.

After parliament backed a move to delay Brexit, May still has only three days to win approval for her deal to leave the European Union if she wants to go to a summit with the bloc’s leaders on Thursday with something to offer them in return for more time.

Stepping up the pressure on the prime minister, Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the main opposition Labour Party, said he could trigger another confidence vote in May’s government if she fails again to get her deal approved by parliament.

Almost three years since Britain voted to leave the EU in a referendum, the country is no clearer about how and when it will leave the bloc, with several outcomes possible, from exiting without a deal to Brexit never happening at all.

May’s warning that if parliament again votes against her deal — which has already been crushed twice by lawmakers — that Britain could face a long delay and would need to take part in European elections in May seemed to be winning some over.

But her finance minister, Philip Hammond, said she was not in the clear yet.

“What has happened … is that a significant number of colleagues … have changed their view on this and decided that the alternatives are so unpalatable to them that they on reflection think the prime minister’s deal is the best way to deliver Brexit,” he told BBC’s Andrew Marr program.

Asked if the government had enough numbers yet, he replied: “Not yet, it is a work in progress.”

Many Brexit supporters in May’s Conservative Party say the key to whether they will back her deal is the agreement of the Northern Irish Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), which props up the prime minister’s minority government in parliament.

May needs 75 lawmakers to change their vote after it was crushed first in January by 230 lawmakers and then by 149 on March 12.

The DUP’s 10 lawmakers could sway a large segment of a pro-Brexit Conservative grouping, several lawmakers say, but even then, she would still probably also have to get some Labour lawmakers on board as well.

NO MONEY

Hammond said talks were continuing with the DUP to find ways of reassuring the party that any future border arrangements with EU member Ireland would not mean that Northern Ireland might be split away from the rest of Britain.

He denied the government would offer the DUP money to back the deal.

Until it is clear that the support is there, trade minister Liam Fox said, the government will not have the vote, which is widely expected to be held on Tuesday.

“It would be difficult to justify having a vote if we knew we were going to lose it,” Fox told Sky News.

With a threat that will no doubt focus ministers’ minds, Corbyn said he would try to force a confidence vote against the government if the prime minister failed to win approval for it and tried to further run “down the clock”.

“I think at that point a confidence motion would be appropriate. At that point we should say there has to be a general election,” he said.

There were signs that some Brexit supporters were shifting their views, fearful that if the deal failed, Brexit would never take place.

“The choice before us is this deal or no Brexit whatsoever and to not have Brexit would go against the democratic vote of the people,” said Esther McVey, a Brexit supporter who resigned from May’s government last year in protest against May’s deal.

“We’re going to have to hold our nose and vote for it.”

(Writing by Elizabeth Piper)

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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