GUATEMALA CITY – A prominent former Guatemalan prosecutor was nominated Sunday to run for president by the Seed Movement party.
Sixty-three-year-old Thelma Aldana was Guatemala's top prosecutor from 2014 to 2018. During that time, she jailed then-President Otto Perez Molina and most of his Cabinet on corruption charges. Perez Molina resigned in 2015.
Prosecutors said last week that they have opened a corruption investigation into Aldana. If she is arrested or charged, it could effectively prevent her from running in the June election.
Prosecution spokeswoman Julia Barrera said the investigation was related to a case of irregular hiring of personnel.
The all new and advanced Super Male Vitality formula uses the newest extraction technology with even more powerful concentrations of various herbs and extracts designed to be even stronger.
The all new and advanced Super Male Vitality formula uses the newest extraction technology with even more powerful concentrations of various herbs and extracts designed to be even stronger.
Flip the switch and supercharge your state of mind with the all-new Brain Force PLUS: 20% more capsules and a critically enhanced formula featuring a brand new ingredient and increased potency* – all for the same low price.
Flip the switch and supercharge your state of mind with the all-new Brain Force PLUS: 20% more capsules and a critically enhanced formula featuring a brand new ingredient and increased potency* – all for the same low price.
Flip the switch and supercharge your state of mind with the all-new Brain Force PLUS: 20% more capsules and a critically enhanced formula featuring a brand new ingredient and increased potency* – all for the same low price.
Flip the switch and supercharge your state of mind with the all-new Brain Force PLUS: 20% more capsules and a critically enhanced formula featuring a brand new ingredient and increased potency* – all for the same low price.
A 25-year-old Las Vegas woman has been arrested in California, charged in the murder of a 71-year-old child psychiatrist who was found bludgeoned to death in the trunk of a car in Nevada earlier this month, authorities said Thursday.
Kelsey Turner was taken into custody March 21 in Stockton in connection with the death of Dr. Thomas Burchard, of Salinas, Calif., Las Vegas Metropolitan Police said.
Turner was arrested by Las Vegas detectives and the Stockton FBI task force, FOX5 Las Vegas reported. Further details on her arrest or how police identified Turner as a suspect in Burchard’s death weren’t immediately available.
Her name and photo matched those that appeared on a Facebook profile that described the woman as a model who posed for racy photos, including some posted on Playboy's Italian-language website, the Californian of Salinas reported.
Kelsey Turner, 25, was arrested in California for the murder of Thomas Burchard, a 71-year-old psychiatrist, whose body was found bludgeoned to death earlier this month in the trunk of a car in Nevada, authorities said Thursday. (Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department)
Social media profiles for a Kelsey Turner identify her as a model living in Las Vegas, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported. But property records obtained by the paper indicate Turner also had addresses in Arizona and California, including Salinas, about 130 miles from Stockton.
Burchard’s body was discovered March 7 in a desert area near the entrance to the Lake Mead National Recreational Area. His body was found after a passerby noticed a rock had been thrown through one of the vehicle's windows, police said. It was not immediately clear who owned the car.
Authorities determined Burchard died from blunt force injury to the head. His death was ruled a homicide.
Burchard, who chose not to retire at 65 because he couldn’t bear to leave his patients, had worked nearly four decades in the behavioral health program with Montage Health, the Review-Journal reported.
"Dr. Burchard was a psychiatrist in our behavioral health program for almost 40 years and was very helpful to many patients," Montage Health spokeswoman Mary Barker said. "It’s a very sad situation and our hearts go out to his family, friends, patients, and colleagues. We are notifying his patients and providing grief counseling for staff."
Turner was being held in the San Joaquin County Jail without bail as she awaits extradition to face a murder charge in Las Vegas.
New bollard-style U.S.-Mexico border fencing is seen in Santa Teresa, New Mexico, U.S., March 5, 2019. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson
March 27, 2019
By Phil Stewart
MIAMI (Reuters) – Acting U.S. Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan said on Wednesday he would push ahead with plans to transfer $1 billion to help fund President Donald Trump’s wall on the U.S. border with Mexico, even as he acknowledged a likely backlash from Congress.
Democratic Representative Adam Smith, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said on Tuesday that the panel did not approve the proposed shift in Pentagon expenditure. Any decision to go ahead anyway could prompt Congress to create new restrictions that could impact the Pentagon in the future.
Asked whether his plan was to move ahead regardless, Shanahan said: “Yes, it is.”
“There are going to be consequences. I understand the position of the committees. I also have a standing legal order from the commander-in-chief,” he said.
Congress could attempt to cut off the Pentagon’s authority to reprogram funds, something Smith hinted at during the hearing.
Asked whether he expected Smith to follow through, Shanahan said: “I would expect that to happen.”
Still, the Pentagon insists it has the authority to shift the $1 billion.
The House failed on Tuesday to override Trump’s first veto of the “national emergency” he declared last month to build a U.S.-Mexico border wall that Congress has not funded.
Smith told the hearing that Trump’s proposed $750 billion defense budget would not pass as it was proposed. That budget included $100 billion in a “slush fund” meant to fund ongoing wars but which the Pentagon intends to use to boost the amount of money it has available to avoid budget caps.
Shanahan said losing the ability to reprogram funds could present problems for Pentagon planners, who have to shift resources around to deal with natural disasters and other emergencies.
“It’s a very difficult situation and … we’re going to have to be artful to manage this,” he said. “I don’t think it’s going to be easy.
(Reporting by Phil Stewart; additional reporting by Idrees Ali and Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Sandra Maler)
The Sri Lanka terror attack by Islamic jihadists that resulted in 207 dead is being carefully downplayed by the mainstream media, omitting in their headlines that the attacks were perpetrated by Islamist suicide bombers.
Several media outlets have been careful to avoid any mention of radical Islam in their headlines, or that the deaths were the result of a terrorist attack.
The headlines are in stark contrast to how the corporate media zealously covered the Christchurch terrorist attack by a white supremacist that killed 49 last month, which highlighted not only the attacker’s identity, but his white supremacist motives.
After Christchurch, Alex Jones warned of the media’s double standard, and claimed they would downplay the next big Islamic attack that would surely result in mass casualties to advance their narrative that Christianity is evil and Islam is good.
In this case, the jihadist bombings in Sri Lanka killed 400% more people than Christchurch, but you wouldn’t know that based on the MSM’s tepid coverage.
Why not cover all of these attacks with the same level of seriousness and fervor they deserve? It shouldn’t matter whether the victims were Christians or Muslims because they’re still victims of horrific crimes.
FILE PHOTO: Mar 17, 2019; New York, NY, USA; Los Angeles Lakers forward LeBron James (23) sits on the court after getting fouled in the second quarter against the New York Knicks at Madison Square Garden. Mandatory Credit: Wendell Cruz-USA TODAY Sports
March 22, 2019
LeBron James participated in about half of practice Thursday, and coach Luke Walton expects him to play Friday when the Los Angeles Lakers host the Brooklyn Nets, The Athletic reported.
With the Lakers managing the superstar’s minutes down the stretch, the superstar forward has sat out two of the past three games. He did not play in last Friday in the Lakers’ 111-97 loss at Detroit or Tuesday on Los Angeles’ 115-101 defeat at Milwaukee.
James did start and play 35 minutes Sunday in the Lakers’ 124-123 loss at New York, finishing with 33 points on 11-of-26 shooting with eight assists and six rebounds. His potential game-winning jumper was blocked by Knicks forward Mario Hezonja in the final seconds.
–Boston Celtics guard Marcus Smart was fined $50,000 by the NBA for shoving Philadelphia 76ers center Joel Embiid in a Wednesday game.
In its announcement, the NBA said the amount of Smart’s fine “was also based on his repeated acts of unsportsmanlike conduct during NBA games.” Smart drew a $35,000 fine earlier this season for an altercation with DeAndre’ Bembry of the Atlanta Hawks, and he has accrued $170,000 in fines during his five-year career, according to MassLive.com.
Smart drew his latest fine after shoving Embiid from behind, sending the 76ers center sprawling to the floor. The 25-year-old Smart was whistled for a flagrant-2 foul and was ejected from the game after the incident, which occurred with 11:06 to go in the third quarter.
–Golden State Warriors forward Kevin Durant’s “adopted brother” and close friend Clifford Dixon was shot and killed outside of a metro Atlanta bar early Thursday, according to multiple reports.
Dixon, 32, was shot multiple times in a parking lot just after 1 a.m., police in Chamblee, Ga., confirmed. He was transported to Grady Memorial Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. A suspect fled the scene on foot, and no arrests were immediately made.
According to the Oklahoman, Durant’s mother, Wanda Durant, took Dixon into the family’s home when he was 16 years old. Dixon was one of the friends Durant thanked during an emotional speech after being named the NBA Most Valuable Player for the 2013-14 season.
–Phoenix Suns forward Kelly Oubre Jr. will have minor surgery on his left thumb and will miss the rest of the season, ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski reported. The recovery is expected to be four to six weeks, according to the report.
Oubre, 23, has been playing the best ball of his career after the Suns acquired him in December as part of the trade that sent Trevor Ariza to the Washington Wizards.
Oubre has averaged 16.9 points and 4.9 rebounds in 40 games with the Suns, building on his career average of 9.4 points and 3.7 rebounds over four seasons.
–The Suns reached a two-year deal with Jimmer Fredette, giving the former college phenom a second crack at the NBA, according to reports.
Fredette, 30, is awaiting clearance from his current team, the Shanghai Sharks of the Chinese Basketball Association. Fredette averaged 36.9 points per game this season for the Sharks, who were eliminated from the postseason Tuesday.
Fredette, a 6-foot-2 guard who was the all-time leading scorer in BYU and Mountain West Conference history, will be signed through the rest of this season, with a team option for 2019-2020. He was the unanimous national player of the year in college basketball in 2011 after shattering NCAA scoring records.
–The Minnesota Timberwolves announced they will be without forward Robert Covington and guards Derrick Rose and Jeff Teague for their final 11 games of the season.
Covington hasn’t played since Dec. 31 and recently experienced a setback in his recovery from a right knee bone bruise. Rose has missed the past four games because of a chip fracture and a loose body in his right elbow. Teague, having aggravated a left foot injury originally sustained in December, also has missed the past four games.
The top Republicans on the House Oversight Committee are demanding to know why the panel's Democratic leadership allegedly leaked key documents concerning Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump's security clearances to the media, without bothering to keep Republicans on the committee in the loop and while continuing to press the White House to provide the same documents.
In a letter sent Monday to House Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings, D-Md., ranking members Mark Meadows and Jim Jordan raised the alarm over a Mar. 8, 2019 article in Axios, in which reporter Alexi McCammond wrote that a "senior Democratic aide involved in handling the documents" told the outlet that "the House Oversight Committee has obtained documents related to Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump's security clearances that the Trump administration refused to provide."
McCammond went on to write that Axios had "obtained" one of those documents, which "provides some details about why Kushner's security clearance was changed to 'interim' in September 2017. One document quoted by Axios read: "Per conversation with WH counsel the clearance was changed to interim Top Secret until we can confirm that the DOJ or someone else actually granted a final clearance. This action was taken out of an abundance of caution because the background investigation has not been completed."
Another document, dated Feb. 23, 2018, read simply: "Clearance downgraded to Interim Secret per COS direction" — then-chief of staff John Kelly, according to Axios.
The article raised several questions for Jordan, R-Ohio, and Meadows, R-N.C., especially given the oversight panel's repeated requests to the White House, from January through February, for documents pertaining to the security clearance process. Earlier this month, White House counsel Pat Cipollone wrote a letter to Cummings rejecting the committee's request for documents as "extraordinarily intrusive," while asserting that Cummings has rejected reasonable compromises.
Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump make their way to board Marine One before departing from South Lawn of the White House in Washington, DC on October 30, 2018. (Photo by MANDEL NGAN / AFP) (Photo credit should read MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images)
"We first learned about these documents from Axios’s reporting," Meadows and Jordan wrote to Cummings. "However, according to the article, the Committee had been in possession of the documents since early February. The article quoted a 'senior Democratic aide' as characterizing the documents as 'part of the puzzle that we would be asking for.' Axios reported that it had even obtained access to at least one of these documents."
The Republicans continued: "Axios’s reporting, if accurate, is concerning for two reasons. First, if you already possessed in early February the documents that you 'would be asking for' from the White House, there would be no legitimate oversight basis to renew your request that the White House produce these documents to the Committee on February 11, 2019.
"Second, and most troubling, the Axios article—if accurate—suggests a departure from the Committee’s historical practice of sharing documents that will be made publicly available," the GOP representatives added. "The Axios article suggests the reporter 'obtained' a document from a larger group of documents provided to the Committee. If accurate, the story seems to suggest that you made these documents available to the press. We have yet to receive this same courtesy."
"These actions are not indicative of the objective, fact-based oversight you promised."
— GOP Reps. Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows
By not sharing documents with Republicans on the committee, Meadows and Jordan wrote, Cummings had deprived the panel's GOP minority of the "opportunity to participate in and be aware of the Committee’s work."
"Without access to these documents, we cannot determine whether the information in the Axios story is cherry-picked, inaccurate, or out of context," they wrote. "In addition, the disclosure of documents to the press so early in an investigation undercuts the sincerity of the Committee’s investigation. By providing documents to the media before the Committee issues any reports or holds any hearings, one may conclude that the Committee is seeking documents for future public disclosure to harass and embarrass the President and his senior advisors."
Meadows and Jordan charged that "this conduct seems to be part of a larger trend," noting that "as the star witness of your first big hearing, you invited Michael Cohen, a convicted liar who then lied to the Committee several times under oath."
They concluded with a demand for the documents, and an admonition: "These actions are not indicative of the objective, fact-based oversight you promised."
Late last month, a spokesman for Kushner's attorney told Fox News that President Trump's son-in-law received a top-secret security clearance through "the regular process with no pressure from anyone," after The New York Times reported that Trump "ordered" then-White House Chief of Staff John Kelly to grant the clearance against the advice of then-White House Counsel Don McGhan.
Fox News reported in May 2018 that Kushner had obtained a full security clearance. He had been working at the White House with an interim security clearance for the better part of a year, through late February 2018. That month, Kushner's interim clearance was downgraded from "interim top secret" to "interim secret" after Kelly set a Feb. 23, 2018, deadline for halting access to top-secret information for those whose applications have been pending since June 1, 2017, or earlier.
The Times report, which cited "four people briefed on the matter," said that Trump told Kelly to grant Kushner a top-secret clearance the day after the White House Counsel's Office recommended that he not be given one. The report claimed that Kelly was so disturbed by Trump's command that he wrote an internal memo stating that he had been "ordered" to give Kushner the clearance.
Fox News' Brooke Singman and Samuel Chamberlain contributed to this report.
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.”
The U.S. government say Butina was part of an unofficial influence campaign that overlapped with the 2016 presidential election and targeted conservatives; chief intelligence correspondent Catherine Herridge reports from the U.S. district court in Washington.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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].”
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.
DNA Force Plus is finally here! Now you can support optimal energy levels while adapting your body to handle the daily bombardment of toxins to overhaul your body’s cellular engines with a fan-favorite formula.
DNA Force Plus is finally here! Now you can support optimal energy levels while adapting your body to handle the daily bombardment of toxins to overhaul your body’s cellular engines with a fan-favorite formula.
DNA Force Plus is finally here! Now you can support optimal energy levels while adapting your body to handle the daily bombardment of toxins to overhaul your body’s cellular engines with a fan-favorite formula.
DNA Force Plus is finally here! Now you can support optimal energy levels while adapting your body to handle the daily bombardment of toxins to overhaul your body’s cellular engines with a fan-favorite formula.
DNA Force Plus is finally here! Now you can support optimal energy levels while adapting your body to handle the daily bombardment of toxins to overhaul your body’s cellular engines with a fan-favorite formula.
DNA Force Plus is finally here! Now you can support optimal energy levels while adapting your body to handle the daily bombardment of toxins to overhaul your body’s cellular engines with a fan-favorite formula.
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)
Click below to consent to the use of the cookie technology provided by vi (video intelligence AG) to personalize content and advertising. For more info please access vi's website.