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Prosecutors drop most remaining cases in fatal prison riot

Delaware prosecutors are dismissing all but three remaining cases against inmate defendants charged in a deadly prison riot.

Friday's decision comes after earlier trials of seven inmates resulted in only one convicted of murder in guard Steven Floyd's death.

With little physical evidence, prosecutors have relied heavily on testimony from other inmates who were in the building at Delaware's maximum-security prison during the 2017 riot but were not among the 18 charged.

Defense attorneys have argued that the prosecution witnesses have contradicted one another and that their testimony conflicts with statements they gave investigators.

Floyd was killed and two other guards beaten and later released before tactical teams stormed the building and rescued a female counselor.

Source: Fox News National

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Cyprus: Ground not yet ready for peace talks resumption

Cyprus' president says conditions aren't yet ready for a resumption of formal talks to reunify the ethnically divided island nation because both sides remain apart on key issues regarding power sharing and security arrangements. Nicos Anastasiades, a Greek Cypriot, says efforts to restart negotiations are going through a "difficult phase," but that he and Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci have pledged to work to get negotiations back on track.

The United Nations hosted an informal meeting Tuesday between the two men in hopes they could clear the air on certain issues that would allow talks to resume.

They agreed on several measures to boost confidence, including an arrangement enabling people living in the breakaway north and the internationally recognized south to use their mobile telephones on either side.

Source: Fox News World

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Property bust rattles Australia’s record-breaking economy

A
A "For Sale" sign is displayed in front of a row of houses in the suburb of Carlingford, Sydney, Australia February 1, 2019. REUTERS/Tom Westbrook

February 21, 2019

By Tom Westbrook

SYDNEY (Reuters) – As property prices rocketed toward the heady peak of Sydney’s real-estate boom in 2017, the bulldozers came to Epping.

Eucalypt-lined streets of red-brick bungalows in the middle-class suburb were snapped up at hefty premiums by developers, razed, and quickly remade as apartment blocks.

Many units were sold off-the-plan – where buyers enter into contracts and pay deposits before construction starts – to Chinese investors drawn by the location’s reputation as a Chinese community hub and its highly-regarded schools.

But prices are now in freefall, and the suburb is being refashioned once more, this time into the epicenter of a bust.

As buyers disappear and miss settlement payments, some projects are sinking under their debts.

“Once the sales rates and pricing dropped, it just couldn’t service all of its commitments,” said Philip Campbell-Wilson, who is liquidating one such new development, Gondon’s Elysee Epping.

Campbell-Wilson is finalizing a list of creditors which include building contractors as well as financiers and debts of A$57 million ($40 million).

The developer’s parent company did not return phone calls and sales staff for the development directed Reuters to its receiver, Newgate Advisory, which declined to comment.

Now 61 of Gondon’s 130 apartments are for sale all bundled together to recoup creditors’ funds, pushing prices in the area lower still.

Prices in the Epping area have already fallen more than a fifth from their peak in August 2017, according to data from property consultant Corelogic, the steepest falls in Sydney.

“Up until December there’s actually been an acceleration of the decrease in pricing,” said Jay Carter, sales director at the Australian arm of Chinese developer Poly Real Estate Group Co, which recently built a 516-unit complex in Epping.

Poly plans to hang on to most of roughly 30 unsold apartments in its development in the hopes that the rate of Sydney price falls slowing slightly in January signals the bottom of the market approaching, he added.

BUILDERS HAMMERED

As monthly insolvencies in the construction industry hit their highest in almost three years in November, consequences have begun to ripple outwards through Australia’s economy, which has grown for 27 years straight without a recession.

A slew of profit downgrades and weak results at businesses from banks to advertisers and retailers has followed and the central bank has now opened the door to a cut in interest rates.

Australia’s house price falls are not entirely unwelcome and have been partly engineered by authorities to improve affordability.

Epping prices, for example, doubled in the eight years leading to the 2017 peak.

Curbs on lending to foreigners and a clampdown on capital flows by Beijing hurt demand from Chinese investors, Australia’s largest source of international property investment.

Last financial year, foreign investment in residential property dropped 58 percent to A$12.5 billion, government figures show.

Local residential property investors are also finding it tougher to borrow as banks tighten loan conditions under pressure from regulators.

The impacts have been underestimated according to Peter Summers, chief executive of AVJennings, a developer exposed to suburban markets in Melbourne and Sydney, which is now looking to slow supply as the market turns sour.

“In a couple of projects, we’ve already reduced our stage sizes and delayed a couple of stages,” he said.

The company announced a 91 percent drop in half-year profit as a combination of delays and buyers’ reticence sapped sales.

The pullback is not bad news for everyone.

While the heaviest wipeouts have been reserved for the frothiest sections of the market, like apartments built largely for foreign buyers, developers such as Mirvac Group say they are so far unscathed and even on the lookout for sites.

Price falls are also giving first-home buyers a chance to get into a market ranked as among the least affordable in the world by researcher Demographia, based on the ratio of median house prices to median income.

And with the central bank cooling on the idea of a rate hike, the prospect of higher mortgage repayments sparking a rush of defaults is reduced.

But the sentiment has still brought forward-looking construction indicators to a screeching halt. Monthly building approvals are down by 40 percent from their peak and construction loans hit a three-year low in December.

RIPPLE EFFECT

Profits are falling, or forecast to drop at building suppliers CSR Ltd and Boral Ltd, and ancillary companies are also suffering.

Garbage collector Bingo Industries Ltd on Monday reported a slowdown in building waste volume growth in the first half of its fiscal year, an announcement that halved the value of its shares.

“It flows through everything,” said Jason Teh, Chief Investment Officer at Vertium Asset Management.

Housing price falls tend to discourage spending because home owners feel less wealthy, save more, and cut back on purchases.

“The question is whether there’s more to come…the economic momentum, as showed by company earnings is getting worse,” Teh said, adding it would probably take a central bank rate cut to arrest the decline.

Property classifieds sites Domain Australia Holdings Ltd and News Corp-owned rival REA Group as well as furniture seller Nick Scali are also feeling the negative effects.

Grocers Coles Group Ltd and Woolworths Group Ltd have also reported slowdowns.

“People are just not as confident or sure as to where things are going,” said Darryl Abotomey, chief executive of car repairer and parts distributor Bapcor Ltd, which has cut its outlook as drivers postpone vehicle servicing.

His thoughts were echoed at Epping, where realtor Oliver Yap said an apartment nearby that fetched A$562,000 a year ago had taken months to attract a A$415,000 offer. Rents have also sagged.

“We don’t think this year will be good, there’s no reason for it to be good,” Yap said. “There is a huge oversupply of apartments.”($1 = 1.3982 Australian dollars)

(Reporting by Tom Westbrook)

Source: OANN

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Schumer Wants to Rename Senate Building After McCain

Amid President Donald Trump's renewed criticisms of the late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., for leaking the Dems' dossier, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., is vowing to rename Russell Senate Office building after the late senator.

"I look forward to soon re-introducing my legislation re-naming the Senate Russell Building after American hero, Senator John McCain," Sen. Schumer tweeted Wednesday.

President Trump infamously ripped Sen. McCain for claiming to be a war hero because he was captured. Also, the president is still seething over McCain casting the deciding vote to sink the GOP's plans to repeal and replace Obamacare.

It was McCain's last major vote as a senator before he succumbed to glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer.

The renewal of President Trump's longtime rivalry with the deceased senator comes after court documents revealed it was McCain who leaked the Democratic National Committee funding dossier in an effort to meddle in the 2016 presidential election against his heated rival – even though the were in the same party.

Trump reiterated this week: "I was never a fan of John McCain, and I never will be."

The Senate Russell Office building is named after former Sen. Richard Brevard Russell, D-Ga., and has been controversial because of his opposition to civil rights legislation, according to The Hill.

Source: NewsMax Politics

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Gillibrand defends Green New Deal, calls climate change 'greatest threat to humanity we have'

Presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Kirsten Gillibrand compared the Green New Deal to NASA's race for the Moon in the 1960s, telling Fox News' "Special Report" Monday night that "global climate change ... is the greatest threat to humanity we have."

"Scientists have just reached the conclusion that [climate change is] happening far quicker than we know," the fired-up senator from New York told Chris Wallace. "And, what New Yorkers know and what people all across this country know is, when severe weather hits, people die. It destroys communities."

The Green New Deal, championed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and endorsed by several of Gillibrand's would-be competitors in the Democratic field, is an ambitious jobs and infrastructure program that calls for every building in the United States to be replaced or retrofitted to become more energy efficient and for the replacement of air travel with high-speed rail, among other conditions. Republicans have mocked the proposal, saying it would cost trillions of dollars and cripple the U.S. economy.

WHAT IS THE GREEN NEW DEAL? A LOOK AT THE ECONOMIC AND CLIMATE CONCEPT PUSHED BY PROGRESSIVES

"When John F. Kennedy was president, he said, let’s put a man on the Moon in the next 10 years, not because it’s easy but because it’s hard," Gillibrand said. "It will be a measure of our innovation, our entrepreneurialism, our excellence. Why not say to the American people, ‘Global climate change is not only real, but the urgency of this moment requires a call to action to all of America’s engineers, all of our entrepreneurs, all of our innovators to ... solve the problems together?'"

Gillibrand and Wallace then had a lively exchange over Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren's vow to not hold any "big-money fundraisers" during her campaign. Wallace asked Gillibrand if she saw any contradiction between Warren's promise and Gillibrand's plans to hold a March fundraiser at the home of Pfizer executive Sally Susman.

"I think you do need to get money out of politics," Gillibrand said. "... Today, the wealthiest, most powerful lobbyists and special interest groups get to write bills in the dead of night."

"Okay, but answer my one question directly," Wallace interrupted.

"I will, but –" Gillibrand began.

"$2,700," said Wallace, referring to the reported top ticket price for the fundraiser.

ELIZABETH WARREN SWEARS OFF 'BIG MONEY FUNDRAISERS' WITH WEALTHY DONORS

"Let me finish, let me finish," Gillibrand said. "I got you, I got you, I got your point, I’m going to get to it." The senator went on to describe Susman as "who’s a dear friend who I’ve known for years and years, who believes in my gay-rights platform and believes in women’s rights."

"Okay, but what about $2,700 tickets?" Wallace asked again.

"Let me finish," Gillibrand said again. "So, what’s wrong with Washington is, there’s so much corruption. So much corruption, so much greed. We can’t actually pass common sense gun reform in this country not because the American people aren’t behind it – because they are – but because the (National Rifle Association) is more worried about gun sales than they are about the well-being of our kids. So what’s really wrong with Washington is corruption and greed."

"Can you answer my question," Wallace repeated.

"Yes, just let me finish," said Gillibrand, who went on to claim she would not take money from federal lobbyists, super-PACs or corporate PACs and would not have an individual super-PAC for her campaign.

"Could you just answer, though," Wallace responded. "$2,700 tickets, are you going to go ahead and have the fundraiser or not?"

"Of course, I’m going to ask Americans all across this country to support my campaign," Gillibrand said.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

"And, you don't see a contradiction?" asked Wallace.

"I don't," Gillibrand said, "because at the end of the day, people are going to support our campaign because they believe in us."

Source: Fox News Politics

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Gambino crime boss' suspected killer once attempted citizen's arrest of NYC Mayor de Blasio: report

The man accused in the brazen murder of the Gambino crime family's alleged boss reportedly once attempted to make a citizen’s arrest of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.

Anthony Comello, 24, was arrested Saturday in New Jersey in the death of Francesco Cali, who was shot dead earlier this month in front of his Staten Island home. Cali was believed by authorities to be leading one of the country’s most powerful crime organizations in the country.

REPUTED GAMBINO CRIME BOSS' SUSPECTED KILLER FLASHES 'MAGA,' OTHER SLOGANS ON HAND

Comello reportedly told investigators he was high on marijuana during the shooting and claimed he shot the mob boss – 10 times, according to the police – because he feared for his life, though other reports suggest Comello's alleged motive may have had something to do with the mafia boss barring his niece from dating Comello.

But just a few months ago, Comello wasn't being accused of shooting alleged bad guys, instead, he was trying to arrest the top authority in New York City -- Mayor de Blasio.

Comello showed up outside city halls to protest the de Blasio’s reign and tried to make a citizen’s arrest of him, the New York Post reported, citing police sources.

Police told the newspaper that the incident was just one example of Comello’s odd behavior and stunts he took part in.

NYPD SAYS SUSPECT TAKEN INTO CUSTODY IN KILLING OF REPUTED GAMBINO CRIME BOSS

During a court appearance on Monday, the suspect wrote a string of slogans on his hand, including “MAGA Forever,” an abbreviation of President Trump’s campaign slogan “Make America Great Again.” He also had “United We Stand MAGA” written on his hand.

Cali ascended to the top spot in the Gambino family sometime around 2015, though he was never charged with a crime while leading the group.

Officials haven’t said the Gambino crime family has posted a bounty on Comello, but “the general feeling is that there’s an ‘X’ on this guy’s back,” one source told the New York Post.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

“He’s going to have some issues in jail,” a high-ranking NYPD official told the Post. “Maybe there’s some guys who are wiseguys in jail who will show their allegiance to the Gambinos and say, ‘We’ll take care of this guy.’”

Fox News’ Frank Miles and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source: Fox News National

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Oil near 2019 highs amid OPEC supply cuts, but rising U.S. output weighs

A pump jack is seen at sunrise near Bakersfield
FILE PHOTO: A pump jack is seen at sunrise near Bakersfield, California October 14, 2014. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson/File Photo

February 20, 2019

By Henning Gloystein

SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Oil prices hovered near 2019 highs on Wednesday, supported by OPEC-led supply cuts and U.S. sanctions on Iran and Venezuela, but capped by soaring U.S. production and expectations of an economic slowdown.

U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil futures were at $55.93 per barrel at 0042 GMT, down 16 cents from their last settlement, but not far off their 2019 high of $56.33 reached earlier this week.

International Brent crude futures had yet to trade. They also hit a 2019 high of $66.83 per barrel this week.

Prices have been driven up by supply cuts led by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).

OPEC’s – and the world’s – biggest oil exporter Saudi Arabia is expected to reduce shipments of light crude oil to Asia in March as part of the effort to tighten markets.

OPEC as well as some non-affiliated producers such as Russia agreed late last year to cut output by 1.2 million barrels per day (bpd) to prevent a large supply overhang from swelling.

“We have lowered Saudi crude oil output in line with announcements … (and) are now assuming that Saudi Arabia will produce in the first three quarters of 2019 less than the 10.31 million bpd target it agreed to at the 7 December OPEC, non-OPEC meeting,” French bank BNP Paribas said in a note.

Because of the cuts, BNP said it expected oil prices “to rally through Q3 2019”, with Brent to average $73 per barrel by then and WTI to average $66.

Another key oil price driver has been U.S. sanctions on oil exporters Iran and Venezuela.

Despite the sanctions, Iran’s crude exports were higher than expected in January, averaging around 1.25 million bpd, according to Refinitiv ship tracking data. Many analysts had expected Iran oil exports to drop below 1 million bpd after the imposition of U.S. sanctions last November.

Standing against the supply cuts and sanctions is U.S. crude output, which soared by more than 2 million bpd in 2018 to a record 11.9 million bpd, thanks to booming shale oil production, which the Energy Information Administration on Tuesday said was expected to keep rising.

BNP Paribas said surging U.S. output would feed into lower oil prices toward the end of the year, with Brent to dip to an average of $67 a barrel by the fourth quarter and WTI to average $61.

“U.S. oil production growth, driven by shale, will be increasingly exported in greater volumes to international markets while the global economy is expected to witness a synchronized slowdown in growth,” the bank said.

(Reporting by Henning Gloystein; Editing by Joseph Radford)

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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Source: InfoWars

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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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