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Chaos Breaks Out As Yellow Vests Clash With French Police

Update: Saturday’s Yellow Vest protests have escalated in intensity as clashes with the police grew increasingly violent. Take a look:

After weeks of more moderate protests, France’s Yellow Vests are back in full swing following the end of President Macron’s unsuccessful ‘great debate’ – during which thousands of town halls were conducted over a two-month period in the hopes of solving national issues through citizen debates.

Up to half-a-million people participated in 10,000 meetings across the country to discuss social issues ranging from taxes – which the French pay the most of any OECD country in the world, to democracy and climate change.

“We have been patient but now we want results,” Yellow Vest Laurent Casanova told AFP.

And with no meaningful changes after nationwide cathartic venting, the Yellow Vests are back to angry demonstrations as the protests kick off their 18th week with an ‘ultimatum’ rally – marked by lootings, fires, and mayhem that organizers maintain are due to a radical minority.

LIVE FEED:

Violence broke out on the Champs-Elysees Paris, where Paris riot police clashed with protesters, using tear gas and water cannons to disperse the crowd.

Some protesters attempted to erect barricades to block streets around Place Charles de Gaulle – prompting the police to respond in kind.

At least one vehicle had been set on fire according to AP as the demonstration turned into yet another riot, and the lootings began. Shop windows were mashed and furniture broken.

REUTERS/Philippe Wojaze

A producer for Ruptly filming the demonstration was injured when he was hit by a police projectile.

In December, Macron attempted to assuage angry protesters with 10 billion ($11.2 billion) in tax cuts and other benefits for low-wage pensioners.

Source: InfoWars

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Brazil’s economic activity falls in February by most in nine months

Employee works at a construction site for a residential building in Sao Paulo
FILE PHOTO: An employee works at a construction site for a residential building in Sao Paulo August 10, 2015. REUTERS/Nacho Doce

April 15, 2019

SAO PAULO (Reuters) – Brazilian economic activity contracted in February by the most in nine months, a central bank indicator showed on Monday, adding to concerns about a sluggish start to the year for Latin America’s largest economy.

The central bank’s IBC-BR economic activity index, a leading indicator of gross domestic product (GDP), fell 0.73 percent in February from January. That followed a revised drop of 0.31 percent in January, a smaller contraction than first reported.

“Economic indicators so far continue to suggest a slight drop of 0.1 percent for GDP in the first quarter of this year,” Bradesco economists wrote in a note.

The data adds to pressure on new President Jair Bolsonaro to reignite an economic recovery which has been lackluster since Brazil’s deep 2015-2016 recession. The cornerstone of Bolsonaro’s economic agenda is a pension reform bill aimed at restoring public finances, which received a rocky reception in Congress.

Treasury Secretary Mansueto Almeida told Reuters last week that Brazil must stick to its fiscal commitments and cut public spending for the long-term benefit of the country, even if that has a detrimental short-term effect on the economy.

(Reporting by Camila Moreira; Editing by Susan Thomas)

Source: OANN

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Prosecutor to review, dismiss cases brought by vice officer

An Ohio prosecutor says he'll review and dismiss open cases handled solely by a vice officer who stands accused of forcing women to have sex with him under threat of an arrest.

Columbus City Attorney Zach Klein also said prosecutors will review cases of defendants who previously pleaded guilty in convictions involving the officer on a case-by-case basis.

Klein's Tuesday announcement follows the federal indictment a day earlier of Columbus vice officer Andrew Mitchell. The veteran officer also was charged with witness tampering and lying to federal agents when he said he'd never had sex with prostitutes.

Defense attorney Mark Collins says Mitchell will plead not guilty.

Source: Fox News National

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Governor to Decide on Blocking Right-to-Work Ordinances in New Mexico

A bill is headed to the New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham that would prohibit local governments from enacting right-to-work ordinances that prevent employees from being required to join a union or pay union fees.

The state Senate on Sunday voted 23-19 to approve the bill from Democrat Reps. Daymon Ely of Corrales and Andrea Romero of Santa Fe. Republicans and three Democrats opposed it.

Ordinances have been approved by several counties in New Mexico that prevent employees from being required to join a union or pay union fees. The proposed legislation asserts the state's exclusive jurisdiction. Union leaders contend the local ordinances create confusion and are undermining the labor groups.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled last year that government workers can't be forced to contribute to labor unions that represent them in collective bargaining.

Source: NewsMax America

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Media Claims Christchurch Shooter Supported Trump, But Manifesto Says “Dear God No”

Several media personalities, celebrities and news outlets are reporting the New Zealand terrorist who killed 49 people at multiple mosques on Friday is a supporter of U.S. President Trump.

Many are focusing on a portion of the shooter’s manifesto where he answers the question, “Were you/are you a supporter of Donald Trump?” by saying, “As a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose? Sure. As a policy maker and leader? Dear god no.”

The first half of the answer is the only portion being widely reported, while the “Dear god no” statement is being totally ignored.

See the slanted coverage for yourself in the following posts.

CNN’s Chief Political Correspondent Dana Bash and political analyst John Avlon joined in, blaming Trump’s rhetoric for the New Zealand shooting.

CNN host John Berman and Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) avoided directly blaming President Trump but asked if his campaign rhetoric influenced the shooter.

The White House responded to those connecting Trump to the shooter with White House director of strategic communications Mercedes Schlapp, saying, “It’s outrageous to even make that connection between this deranged individual that committed this evil crime to the president, who had repeatedly condemned bigotry, racism, and has made it very clear that this is a terrorist attack.”

Alex Jones is live with up-to-date coverage of the attack.

Read the full manifesto below:

Watch Jon Bowne’s epic report exposing the true beleifs of the shooter below:

Source: InfoWars

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Amnesty lambasts EU downscaling of Mediterranean migration mission

FILE PHOTO: Migrants are seen after they were relocated from government-run detention centers, after getting trapped by clashes between rival groups in Tripoli
FILE PHOTO: Migrants are seen after they were relocated from government-run detention centres, after getting trapped by clashes between rival groups in Tripoli, Libya September 4, 2018. REUTERS/Hani Amara/File Photo

March 27, 2019

By Gabriela Baczynska

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Amnesty International criticized the European Union on Wednesday for a “shameful” abdication of its humanitarian responsibilities after the bloc agreed to withdraw ships patrolling the Mediterranean for migrants attempting the perilous voyage.

After months of wrangling, the EU agreed this week to extend its Mediterranean naval mission called Operation Sophia for six months from the end of March – but only for air patrols and training of the Libyan coast guard.

“This is an outrageous abdication of EU governments’ responsibilities,” the international rights group said.

“This shameful decision has nothing to do with the needs of people who risk their lives at sea, but everything to do with the inability of European governments to agree on a way to share responsibility for them,” it said in a statement.

EU states have been at loggerheads over migration since a spike in Mediterranean arrivals caught the bloc by surprise in 2015, stretching social and security services and fuelling support for far-right, nationalist and populist groups.

Sea arrivals have fallen from more than a million in the peak year to some 140,000 people last year, according to U.N. data. But political tensions around migration run high in the EU, especially ahead of European Parliament election in May.

Italy’s anti-immigration hardline deputy prime minister, Matteo Salvini, pushed to remove European aid groups’ boats from the search and rescue area between his country and Libya, where people smugglers operate.

The bloc then moved its Sophia ships north where fewer rescues take place as, under international law, the EU would have to take care of people it plucks from the water.

Salvini then moved to shut Italian ports for them, demanding that other EU states also host the new arrivals or else Rome would pull the plug on the operation in the Mediterranean, where the United Nations says nearly 2,300 people perished last year.

SMUGGLERS

But none wanted to, from major economies like Germany and France that already host many of the people who reached Europe from the Middle East and Africa since 2015, to nationalists ruling in the post-communist east Europe averse to Muslims.

Berlin and others have, however, wanted to continue the Sophia mission to fight smugglers. The awkward compromise this week is another step in the EU’s increasingly restrictive approach to irregular immigration.

“EU governments are now removing their own ships, leaving no-one to save the lives of women, men and children in peril,” Amensty said, adding EU air patrols would from now on only report emergencies to the Libyan coast guard, which can turn the people back to the country where rights abuses are rife.

A spokeswoman for the EU’s executive European Commission on Wednesday acknowledged the diminished mission would play a much smaller role in saving lives: “It’s clear that without naval assets, Operation Sophia will not be able to effectively implement its mandate,” Maja Kocijancic told a news briefing.

The EU has been funding U.N. agencies to help improve conditions in migrant camps in Libya gripped by lawlessness since the 2011 the ousting of veteran ruler Muammar Gaddafi.

U.N. aid agencies have long decried abuse of human rights in the camps such as rape, lack of medical care and forced labor.

They sound the alarm at refugees and migrants being sent back to Libya in violation of international humanitarian law, which forbids returning people to where their lives are at risk.

(Reporting by Gabriela Baczynska, Editing by William Maclean)

Source: OANN

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Kazakhstan puts campaigner against Chinese camps under house arrest

Kazakh rights activist Serikzhan Bilash walks outside a courthouse in Almaty
Kazakh rights activist Serikzhan Bilash walks outside a courthouse in Almaty, Kazakhstan, February 13, 2019. REUTERS/Mariya Gordeyeva

March 12, 2019

ALMATY (Reuters) – A Kazakh court has placed an activist who campaigned on behalf of ethnic Kazakhs in China under house arrest on the charge of calling for a “jihad” against the Chinese, state prosecutors said.

Serikzhan Bilash, a naturalized Kazakh citizen born in the Chinese region of Xinjiang, leads Atajurt, a group that has worked for the release of ethnic Kazakhs from “re-education” camps where activists say more than a million ethnic Uighurs and other Muslims are held.

Police detained Bilash in Almaty, Kazakhstan’s biggest city, last weekend and brought him before a court in Astana, the Central Asian nation’s capital.

In a statement issued late on Monday, the Astana prosecutor’s office said Bilash is suspected of making the jihad comment at a public event last month. He has yet to make a plea.

Prosecutors said the court placed Bilash under house arrest for two months while they prepare for trial.

(Reporting by Olzhas Auyezov; Editing by Nick Macfie)

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].”

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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