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BOJ keeps policy steady, cuts view on exports and output

FILE PHOTO: A security guard walks past in front of the Bank of Japan headquarters in Tokyo
FILE PHOTO: A security guard walks past in front of the Bank of Japan headquarters in Tokyo, Japan January 23, 2019. REUTERS/Issei Kato/File Photo

March 15, 2019

TOKYO (Reuters) – The Bank of Japan kept monetary policy steady on Friday and offered a bleaker assessment of exports and output, nodding to heightening overseas risks that could threaten to derail a fragile economic recovery.

The central bank also modified its view on Japan’s overall economy, pointing to the impact from slowing overseas growth.

In a widely expected move, the BOJ maintained its short-term interest rate target at minus 0.1 percent and a pledge to guide 10-year government bond yields around zero percent.

The decision on maintaining its interest rate targets was made by a 7-2 vote with board members Goushi Kataoka and Yutaka Harada dissenting.

The central bank said exports were showing some weakness recently. At its previous review in January, it had said they were “increasing as a trend.”

BOJ Governor Haruhiko Kuroda will hold a news conference at 3:30 p.m. (0630 GMT) to explain the policy decision.

(Reporting by Leika Kihara, Stanley White, Tetsushi Kajimoto and Kaori Kaneko; Editing by Chris Gallagher and Chang-Ran Kim)

Source: OANN

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Man with banner scales crane before Trump speech in Florida

A man with a banner and an American flag climbed a construction crane near a Florida campus where President Donald Trump was scheduled to speak Monday.

The Miami Herald reports the man spent about two hours atop the crane at the northern edge of the Florida International University campus in the Miami suburb of Sweetwater.

It was unclear what was written in black on the man's white banner. Only the words "Mr. Presidente" were visible, with the rest of the banner twisted in the wind.

Police had blocked off streets around the campus and warned traffic would be interrupted by Trump's visit.

The president was expected to speak about the political turmoil in Venezuela. The campus is just south of Doral, a city home to the largest concentration of Venezuelans in the U.S.

___

Information from: The Miami Herald, http://www.herald.com

Source: Fox News National

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Haitians seek water, food as businesses reopen after protest

Businesses and government offices are slowly reopening in Haiti after more than a week of violent demonstrations.

People began lining up to buy food, water and gas and public transportation resumed on Monday in the capital of Port-au-Prince. Crews were clearing barricaded streets where tens of thousands of Haitians had protested to demand the resignation of President Jovenel Moise amid anger over rising prices and and allegations of government corruption.

Moise has refused to step down, though his Prime Minister Jean-Henry Ceant said over the weekend some government budgets would be cut by 30 percent, and he vowed to investigate alleged misspending tied to a Venezuelan program that provided Haiti with subsidized oil.

However, schools remained closed on Monday amid concerns of more violence.

Source: Fox News World

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Extinction Rebellion to end two London blockades on Thursday

The Extinction Rebellion protest in London
Drawing are pictured at the Extinction Rebellion protest site at the Marble Arch in London, Britain April 24, 2019. REUTERS/Toby Melville

April 24, 2019

LONDON (Reuters) – Environmental campaigners Extinction Rebellion will shut down their two remaining central London protest sites on Thursday, the group said after 10 days of disruption in the British capital.

More than 1,000 people have been arrested during the protests, which started last Monday, as part of the group’s campaign of non-violent civil disobedience with the aim of stopping what it calls a global climate crisis.

The protesters said it would end its blockades at Marble Arch and Parliament Square, and said direct action was the only way to bring the issue to public attention.

“We know we have disrupted your lives. We do not do this lightly. We only do this because this is an emergency,” the group said in a statement on Wednesday

“Around the planet, a long-awaited and much-needed conversation has begun.”

The protests took place after months of wrangling in Britain over its decision to leave the European Union, with Brexit dominating the political agenda and leaving little room for anything else.

The environment is back in focus in Westminster now. Swedish climate change activist Greta Thunberg met opposition leaders on Tuesday to discuss what the teenager calls an “existential crisis” for humanity, and criticizing Britain’s “ongoing irresponsible behavior”.

Environment minister Michael Gove said he felt “admiration but also a sense of guilt” after he heard Thunberg speak.

Britain has lowered net emissions by 42 percent since 1990, and currently aims to cut emissions by 80 percent by 2050. Government advisors will suggest new targets next month.

Extinction Rebellion said that the disruption of the last 10 days was just a taster of what was to come.

“The truth is out, the real work is about to begin. The International Rebellion continues,” it said. “Expect more actions very soon.”

(Reporting by Alistair Smout, editing by David Milliken)

Source: OANN

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Guardians of Spanish culture lay out election hopes and fears

Flamenco dancer Collado performs at Las Carboneras flamenco venue in Madrid
Flamenco dancer, or "bailaora", Mariana Collado, 37, performs at Las Carboneras flamenco venue in Madrid, Spain, April 17, 2019. REUTERS/Sergio Perez

April 25, 2019

MADRID (Reuters) – Her heels clacking impossibly fast, a dancer slides across a Flamenco stage in Madrid, while in a Catalan town a burly man in a faded red shirt helps anchor a seven-layer human tower topped by a tiny girl.

Guardians of Spain’s cultural heritage, Mariana Collado and David Tarrats view the future with some uncertainty as they prepare to vote in a national election that looks too close to call.

Collado, from the Flamenco heartland of southern Spain but working in the capital, has no time for political extremism – a far right party will enter parliament on Sunday for the first time in decades – and believes the next government should prioritize the arts.

“Life is full of a marvelous range of different colors and I think the extremes are not good at all,” she told Reuters.

“…I’m afraid that culture could disappear, because culture is the first thing that they get rid of when there’s no money in the country.”

Tarrats, from Vic west of Barcelona, uses his body like a construction block to perpetuate a 200-year-old Catalan tradition of tower-building rooted in skill, strength and, above all, trust – something that, as a separatist, he struggles to extend to politicians.

“I will vote for someone who defends the independence of Catalonia, my rights (and) my language, but it will be complicated because … politicians only want to defend their seat,” he said.

In Spain’s gradually depopulating southern countryside, a grower of its signature olive crop feels largely abandoned by politicians too.

Falling wholesale prices mean Agustin Perea, from the Andalusian village of El Burgo, is finding it ever harder to make a living and he fears for the next generation.

“There are many young people who like farming but they are unable to work in this sector because it demands considerable investment,” he said.

“…(The government) have to help us a bit, otherwise (these) small towns are going to become empty.”

(Reporting by Sergio Perez, Michael Gore, Jon Nazca, Jordi Rubio and Albert Gea, Writing by John Stonestreet; Editing by Susan Fenton)

Source: OANN

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Fifth member of ultra-Orthodox Jewish sect arrested in latest kidnapping plot

Another member of an extremist Jewish sect was arrested Tuesday for allegedly plotting – again – to abduct two New York children who last year were rescued in Mexico.

Matityau Moshe Malka, a member of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish sect “Lev Tahor,” along with four jailed members of the group, were allegedly planning to kidnap a 14-year-old girl and her 12-year-old brother who recently fled the sect with their mother.

Malka is accused of providing the girl with several cellphones, so she could speak with members of the group. He is facing federal kidnapping and obstruction of justice charges.

According to a new chilling indictment, the sect threatened the children’s mother, Sara Helbrans, that they would “fight the mother until the last drop of blood and they will fight her to the death,” the New York Post reported.

“I will take them out from under your hands,” the group’s unnamed “boss” told the mother of Yante, 14, and Chaim, 12, during a call she recorded for authorities. “And will take them back to their father, with God’s help.”

3 ALLEGED LEADERS OF NEW YORK-LINKED JEWISH SECT ARRESTED ON CHARGES OF KIDNAPPING 2 CHILDREN

Four alleged leaders of the group were arrested late last year on kidnapping charges.

Aron Rosner was arrested in New York on Dec. 23, while Nachman Helbrans – the children’s uncle – as well as Mayer Rosner and Jacob Rosner, were arrested days later after they were deported from Mexico back to the United States.

All four men were accused of abducting the two children that month and taking them out of the U.S.

According to authorities, members of Lev Tahor are hell-bent on re-capturing the children, particularly the young girl, so that she cannot testify against the sect. Additionally, they claim sect members want to reunite the child with her adult “husband,” Jacob Rosen.

The girl “is considered within Lev Tahor to be the wife of Jacob Rosner,” the indictment charges against Malka said.

The children’s mother recently fled the sect after she learned that her daughter would be married to a much older man.

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The two children are the grandchildren of the cult’s late founder, Shlomo Helbrans, who started the ultra-Orthodox sect in Israel in 1987. Since then, he has moved the group around the world to Brooklyn, Israel, Canada, Mexico and now Guatemala.

Shlomo Helbrans was previously convicted of kidnapping a 13-year-old in New York. He was later deported to Israel and died in 2017 in Mexico.

His son, Nachman Helbrans, who is jailed in New York, is the sect’s new leader.

Aron Rosner was released in January on $10 million bail in White Plains, the New York Post reported.

Source: Fox News National

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Who is Robert Mueller? 3 things you didn't know about the Russia investigation's special counsel

Special Counsel Robert Mueller is widely recognized for his leadership over the federal government's investigation into the alleged collusion between President Trump’s presidential campaign and Russian officials during the 2016 election. But there's more to the 74-year-old than just his involvement in the high-profile probe.

Mueller, who took over the probe in May 2017, has a storied career that ranges from his time as a Vietnam Marine to later serving as an FBI director.

MUELLER'S RUSSIA INVESTIGATION: WHAT TO KNOW

As the country anxiously awaits Mueller's report regarding the alleged Russian meddling, here are three things to know about him that may surprise you.

Mueller played hockey alongside John Kerry

Mueller, while a student at St. Paul’s school in New Hampshire, was involved in various sports and served as captain of the school’s soccer, lacrosse and hockey teams, according to Biography. But perhaps most notably during his time on the hockey team, Mueller’s fellow teammate was none other than John Kerry, who would later serve as the U.S. Secretary of State from 2013 to 2017.

Mueller led the NFL’s Ray Rice probe

Speaking of sports, Mueller was tapped by the NFL to lead an independent investigation into its handling of the Ray Rice domestic violence case.

Rice was once a running back for the Baltimore Ravens. He was suspended for two games by NFL commissioner Roger Goodell in 2014 after a video surfaced that purportedly showed him dragging his then-fiancée Janay Palmer from an elevator at an Atlantic City casino.

Later, however, TMZ released a video that showed a fuller story of the incident. In the video, the football star is seen hitting Palmer, who is now Rice's wife, in the face, causing her to hit a handrail in the elevator. She was rendered unconscious as a result. His suspension was made indefinite after footage of the entire incident was made public.

In a 2018 interview with "CBS This Morning" alongside Rice, Janay said she doesn't have any intention of ever watching the tape.

HOW PAUL MANAFORT IS CONNECTED TO THE TRUMP, RUSSIA INVESTIGATION

"I was there. I lived it. I don't really need to relive it over and over again just to appease the world," she said.

"And I'm not here to force people to understand. It was never a thought whether I was going leave or not, because I knew that that wasn't him in that moment. This is somebody I've known since I was 15 years old. I knew that we had work to do, and I was willing to move forward and put in the work," Janay added.

Mueller was eventually hired by the NFL to investigate the case, primarily if the league had seen the full footage before it was made public. He ultimately determined the league had not.

He has a unique nickname at the Justice Department

Mueller — whose full name is Robert Swan Mueller III — reportedly has a unique nickname at the U.S. Justice Department in Washington, D.C., reports the Chicago Tribune: “Bobby Three Sticks.”

WHO'S BEEN CHARGED BY MUELLER IN THE RUSSIA PROBE SO FAR?

The nickname, according to the publication, has two meanings: It’s apparently a reference to the “III” at the end of his name but is also reportedly inspired by the Boy Scouts’ three-fingered salute.

Bonus: 

Mueller made the shortlist for TIME magazine's person of the year in 2018.

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].”

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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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