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MAXINE MELTDOWN: ‘This is not the end of anything!’

Maxine Waters still believes the “Kremlin Klan” won the White House for President Trump, despite the evidence indicating otherwise.

But no one can convince her that just because Special Counsel Robert Mueller found there was no collusion with Russia, that it’s over.

“This is not the end of anything!” Waters told MSNBC’s Joy Reid as they realized the report was a giant nothing burger for Democrats.

“This is the— well, it’s the end of the report and the investigation by Mueller. But those of us who chair these committees have a responsibility to continue with our oversight,” Waters said.

“There’s so much that, uh, needs to be, you know, taken a look at at this point,” she claimed,” and so it’s not the end of everything.”

Reuters reports:

Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian meddling in the 2016 election did not find that any U.S. or Trump campaign officials knowingly conspired with Russia, according to details released on Sunday.

Attorney General William Barr sent a summary of conclusions from the report to congressional leaders and the media on Sunday afternoon. Mueller concluded his investigation on Friday after nearly two years, turning in a report to the top U.S. law enforcement officer.

Barr wrote to congressional leaders that “the investigation is not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction-of-justice offense. Our determination was made without regard to, and is not based on, the constitutional considerations that surround the indictment and criminal prosecution of a sitting president,” according to the Daily Mail.

Democrats aren’t giving up.

House Intel Committee chairman Adam Schiff insisted on “This Week” that there is “significant evidence of collusion”.

Source: InfoWars

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Florida person in Easter bunny costume captured brawling on video

The Easter bunny was hoppin’ mad Sunday night and ended up in a three-person brawl in Florida.

A video posted on Instagram showed a person dressed as a white bunny running toward two people, who were already wrestling each other on the sidewalk in downtown Orlando, and joining the fight. The costumed character appeared to begin throwing punches after initially trying to pull the two men apart.

CHOCOLATE EASTER BUNNY MOCKED ON TWITTER FOR 'SUGGESTIVE' POSE

The fight continues for several more seconds as the Easter rabbit delivers vicious body blows (instead of the usual chocolate-filled baskets) and bystanders watch and shout. A police officer eventually jumps in and breaks up the beatdown.

A person dressed as an Easter bunny was involved in a fight in Orlando, Fla.

A person dressed as an Easter bunny was involved in a fight in Orlando, Fla. (Instagram @workfth)

The promoter who posted the video told FOX35 Orlando the melee began when a man bumped into a woman. It’s unclear why the Easter bunny jumped in or who was underneath the costume.

"As you can see, the Easter rabbit been taking boxing classes,” said the promoter, who goes by workfth on Instagram.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

The promoter posted the video on his Instagram with the caption, “HAPPY EASTER. ONLY IN #ORLANDO.”

It’s unclear if anyone was arrested in the incident.

Source: Fox News National

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Japan Catholic Church to begin investigating sex abuse cases

The Catholic Church in Japan is preparing to investigate allegations of sexual abuse against minors by its priests, including accusations from 20 years ago, amid widening pedophilia scandals.

The Catholic Bishops' Conference in Japan said Thursday it has established a committee per district but details of an investigation haven't been decided.

The conference said surveys found two reported cases in 2002 and five in 2015, which weren't disclosed or verified. It said they will be retroactively investigated.

The decision comes after Pope Francis convened a bishops' summit in February to press responses to worldwide scandals.

He is expected to visit Japan in November in the first papal visit to the country since John Paul II in 1981.

Japan's Catholic community is about 440,000, or 0.3 percent of the population.

Source: Fox News World

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House panel probes Anthem, UnitedHealth over short-term health plans

FILE PHOTO: The office building of health insurer Anthem is seen in Los Angeles, California
FILE PHOTO: The office building of health insurer Anthem is seen in Los Angeles, California February 5, 2015. REUTERS/Gus Ruelas

March 13, 2019

(Reuters) – The U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce on Wednesday launched an investigation into 12 health insurers, including Anthem Inc and UnitedHealth Group, over their sale of short-term plans.

Terming the short-term plans as “junk”, the committee said it was troubled that consumers who sign up for the plans are being misled about the nature of the coverage they are purchasing.

“The Democrats cite concerns over several troubling reports of STLDI (short-term, limited duration insurance) plans denying coverage entirely, charging more based on age, gender or health state, or refusing to cover consumers for care that may stem from what the company deems a pre-existing condition,” the panel said.

Shares of Health Insurance Innovations Inc fell nearly 20 percent, while eHealth Inc dropped 4.8 pct. Shares of Anthem and UnitedHealth Group pared gains, but were still up between 2 and 3 percent.

(Reporting by Vibhuti Sharma in Bengaluru; Editing by Maju Samuel)

Source: OANN

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IOC urges India isolation after Pakistani athletes denied visas

IOC members talk at the end of the 133rd IOC session in Buenos Aires
FILE PHOTO: Members of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), talk at the end of the 133rd IOC session in Buenos Aires, Argentina October 9, 2018. REUTERS/Marcos Brindicci

February 22, 2019

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – The International Olympic Committee have suspended all Indian applications to host future events and urged international sports federations not to stage competitions in the country after two Pakistanis were denied visas to compete in New Delhi.

The denial of entry visas for two shooters due to take part in a World Cup event in the Indian capital this weekend followed last week’s attack by a Pakistan-based militant group in the disputed region of Kashmir, which killed at least 40 paramilitary police.

India has accused its neighbor of not doing enough to control the militant groups responsible for the Kashmir attacks. Pakistan has denied any involvement.

The IOC said the refusal of visas for competitors went against the principles of the Olympic charter relating to discrimination and political interference from the host country.

“Since becoming aware of the issue, and in spite of intense last-minute … efforts … and discussions with the Indian government authorities, no solution has been found to allow the Pakistani delegation to enter India in time to compete,” the IOC statement said.

“As a result, the IOC Executive Board also decided to suspend all discussions with the Indian NOC and government regarding the potential applications for hosting future sports and Olympic-related events in India,” it said.

The body also urged all international sports federations not to hold events in India, or grant hosting rights to the country for future competitions, until the government had provided “clear written guarantees” to ensure access for all athletes.

The Indian Olympic Association last year laid out an ambitious roadmap to host the Youth Olympics in 2026, the Asian Games in 2030 and the Summer Olympics for the first time in 2032.

The shooters were scheduled to take part in the 25m pistol event and the IOC said two spots at next year’s Tokyo Olympics that had been up for grabs in that competition had been revoked.

The International Shooting Sport Federation said on Wednesday it faced “an urgent situation as Pakistani athletes cannot get entry visas to participate in the competition” because of the Kashmir attack.

The IOC said Olympic berths would still be up for grabs in other events.

“The IOC restricted the withdrawal of recognition as an Olympic qualification event to the 25m rapid fire pistol competition in which the two Pakistani athletes were supposed to participate,” it said.

“This happened in the interest of the other 500 athletes from 61 countries participating in the other events who are already in India for their competition.”

(Writing by Nick Mulvenney in Sydney; Editing by Paul Tait)

Source: OANN

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Semenya “optimistic” of victory in appeal against IAAF rules

Caster Semenya's lawyers say the Olympic champion is "optimistic" of victory in her appeal against IAAF rules designed to control naturally high levels of testosterone in female athletes.

South African Semenya's lawyers said in a statement Friday that "she remains optimistic the Court of Arbitration for Sport will declare the IAAF's regulations unlawful, invalid and of no effect."

The rules proposed by track and field's governing body, which haven't yet come into effect, would require female athletes with naturally high levels of testosterone to lower those levels either by medication or surgery in order to be eligible to compete at top track meets. The rules would apply to distances ranging from 400 meters to one mile.

The lawyers said a victory for Semenya at the CAS would "prevent women athletes from ever having to undergo medical interventions in an attempt to comply with these regulations."

The statement from Semenya's lawyers came a day after the CAS, sport's highest court, said a decision in the pivotal case would be delayed until the end of April to allow for more legal debate. The delay is down to extra evidence submitted by both sides. Semenya's lawyers confirmed she had made additional submissions "in response to post-hearing communications from the IAAF."

Semenya is a two-time Olympic and three-time world champion in the 800 meters. She's the most famous of a number of female athletes who have high levels of naturally occurring testosterone. The IAAF argues that gives them an unfair advantage over other female athletes.

___

More AP sports: https://apnews.com/apf-sports and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports

Source: Fox News World

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In second stint as U.S. attorney general, Barr faces toughest call on Mueller report

FILE PHOTO: U.S. Attorney General William Barr leaves his house after Special Counsel Robert Mueller found no evidence of collusion between U.S. President Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia in the 2016 election in McClean, Virginia
FILE PHOTO: U.S. Attorney General William Barr leaves his house after Special Counsel Robert Mueller found no evidence of collusion between U.S. President Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia in the 2016 election in McClean, Virginia, U.S., March 25, 2019. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts/File Photo

April 9, 2019

By Andy Sullivan and Sarah N. Lynch

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – On Aug. 29, 1991, William Barr had a decision to make.

Cuban inmates had seized hostages inside an Alabama prison in a bid to avoid deportation, and now they were threatening to kill them. Only 19 days into his job as acting attorney general, Barr ordered the FBI to mount a rescue mission.

Before dawn broke the next day, the hostages were freed and the prisoners subdued. Barr’s gamble had paid off. Three months later, he was confirmed unanimously by the Senate to serve as nation’s youngest attorney general, the top U.S. law enforcement official.

Barr, now 68, is “not afraid to make decisions that fall into his areas of responsibility,” said George Terwilliger, who served as Barr’s deputy during his first stint as attorney general under President George H.W. Bush.

Barr is back atop the Justice Department, appointed by Donald Trump after the Republican president fired Jeff Sessions as attorney general in November.

Barr is facing a different type of high-pressure situation as he determines how much of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russia’s role in the 2016 election and contacts between Moscow and Trump’s campaign should be made public. Department regulations give Barr broad authority to decide what to disclose and what to withhold.

So far, all Barr has released since Mueller submitted the nearly 400-page report on March 22 is a four-page letter, made public two days later, describing the special counsel’s main conclusions.

Barr wrote that Mueller had not concluded that Trump’s campaign engaged in a criminal conspiracy with Moscow. Barr also said he personally decided after reviewing the report that Mueller did not find enough evidence to show that Trump committed the crime of obstruction of justice.

That assessment has drawn sharp criticism from Democrats. In addition, some members of Mueller’s team are spreading the word that they are unhappy with the way Barr characterized their work, according to media reports.

The public is likely to get a greater look at the factors behind Barr’s decision to clear Trump of obstruction of justice – Mueller had not exonerated Trump – and other investigative details when the attorney general releases a redacted version of the report, which he has promised by mid-April.

For some, that will be too late, considering that all the public knows about the findings in a 22-month inquiry that cast a cloud over Trump’s presidency is the little that Barr has already disclosed.

“It is like fundamentally rigging the game before we know what the actual score is,” said Harvard Law School professor Laurence Tribe, who worked with Barr on a telecommunications case in the 1990s. “His integrity, his history, his reputation is shattered by what he has done. I have no idea what could have motivated him.”

‘AN IMPRESSIVE EFFORT’

Others have said Barr made the right decision on the obstruction question, noting that it is difficult to prove that Trump committed criminal obstruction if Mueller did not find that he destroyed evidence or directly interfered with the investigation – even though he assailed the inquiry as a “witch hunt” and called the investigators partisan zealots.

“Trump made an impressive effort at creating an obstruction case against himself, but it’s no easy task to obstruct an investigation where prosecutors do not believe there’s an underlying crime,” George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley said.

Parts of the report are expected to be blacked out to protect information deemed sensitive. Barr, with Mueller’s assistance, has spent weeks redacting material that might compromise ongoing investigations or intelligence-gathering sources and methods. Barr has said he is also removing material from grand-jury proceedings that by law can be made public only through a court order.

Barr also may opt to redact portions that discuss people who were investigated but not charged such as Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. That would fit with longstanding Justice Department policy, but could draw criticism from Democrats who have said the public should know as much as possible about Trump campaign contacts with Russia during and after the 2016 election.

Trump has said he will not use a legal doctrine called executive privilege, which allows a president to withhold information about internal executive branch deliberations from other branches of government, to block portions of the report. Barr has said he does not plan to submit the report to the White House for review.

“Bill Barr is going to call it like he sees it,” said Wayne Budd, who served as the Justice Department’s third-ranking official during Barr’s first stint as attorney general.

“I think he understands the role of the attorney general is not as a lawyer for the president,” Budd added, “but as a lawyer for the people of the United States.”

(Reporting by Andy Sullivan and Sarah N. Lynch; Editing by Will Dunham)

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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