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Golf: McIlroy to open Masters bid alongside Fowler

FILE PHOTO: Rory McIlroy of Northern Ireland chips on the 13th hole during practice for the 2019 Masters golf tournament at the Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta, Georgia, U.S.
FILE PHOTO: Rory McIlroy of Northern Ireland chips on the 13th hole during practice for the 2019 Masters golf tournament at the Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta, Georgia, U.S., April 8, 2019. REUTERS/Brian Snyder

April 9, 2019

By Frank Pingue

AUGUSTA Ga. (Reuters) – Rory McIlroy will begin his latest quest to complete the career grand slam of golf’s four majors when he tees off alongside American Rickie Fowler and Australia’s Cameron Smith at the Masters starting on Thursday at Augusta National.

It will be McIlroy’s fifth attempt at the Masters to complete his collection of major titles and is perhaps his best chance yet as the Northern Irishman enters the week as the hottest player on the planet.

McIlroy’s grouping, which will be the 15th of 29 to take the course, will start their round at 11:15 a.m. ET (1515 GMT) and follow the threesome of four-times champion Tiger Woods, China’s Li Haotong and Spaniard Jon Rahm around the course.

Looking to join Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan, Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus and Woods as winners of the career grand slam, McIlroy enters the year’s first major in top form.

With a top-six finish in each of the six stroke play events he has played this year, including a triumph at The Players Championship three weeks ago, McIlroy is a popular pick to make amends for his final-round letdown last year.

McIlroy, whose grouping will be the last out on Friday at 2 p.m. ET behind the Woods threesome, started three shots back of eventual champion Patrick Reed entering the final round in 2018 but closed with two-over 74 to finish in a share of fifth place.

Three-times champion Phil Mickelson will play the opening two rounds alongside 2013 U.S. Open champion Justin Rose and 2017 PGA Championship winner Justin Thomas in the penultimate grouping on Thursday.

The final trio on Thursday will bring together Jordan Spieth, Paul Casey and Brooks Koepka.

World number two Dustin Johnson will play the opening two rounds with Bryson DeChambeau and Australian Jason Day while reigning champion Patrick Reed will play alongside fellow American Webb Simpson and Norwegian amateur Viktor Hovland.

(Reporting by Frank Pingue)

Source: OANN

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US housing starts plummeted 11.2 percent in December

The number of homes being built in December plunged to the lowest level in more than two years, a possible sign that developers are anticipating fewer new houses to be sold this year.

The Commerce Department said Tuesday that housing starts fell 11.2 percent in December from the previous month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate 1.08 million. This is the slowest pace of construction since September 2016.

Over the past 12 months, housing starts have tumbled 10.2 percent. December's decline occurred for single-family houses and apartment buildings. Builders have pulled back as higher prices have caused home sales to slump, suggesting that affordability challenges have caused the pool of would-be buyers to dwindle.

Permits to build housing, an indicator of future activity, increased just 0.3 percent in December.

Source: Fox News National

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Rep. Bobby Rush calls Chicago police union the ‘sworn enemy of black people’

Illinois Democratic Rep. Bobby Rush blasted the Chicago police union over the weekend as “the sworn enemy of black people,” pushing back at the controversy surrounding prosecutor Kim Foxx and her office's handling of the Jussie Smollett case.

During a press conference on Saturday, Rush, D-Ill., tore into Chicago’s Fraternal Order of Police after members of the union participated in protests demanding Cook County State's Attorney Foxx, who came into the spotlight amid the Smollett case, resign from her post.

CHICAGO PROSECUTOR KIM FOXX DEFENDS JUSSIE SMOLLETT DECISION

“The FOP is the sworn enemy of black people, the sworn enemy of black people,” Rush said Saturday. “The FOP has always taken the position that black people can be shot down in the street by members of the Chicago Police Department, and suffer no consequences.”

He added: “Let’s be clear: Kim Foxx, her battle, is with the FOP and all of their cohorts.”

Rush’s comments came after hundreds of protesters, including members of the police union, gathered outside Foxx’s office last week. The union protesters were met with counter-protests from groups including the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, according to the Chicago Tribune. The Tribune also reported that members of white nationalist groups were also at the union’s protest.

“The injection of white nationalists in this conversation for me, I will tell you personally, I was afraid,” Foxx said on Saturday. “I would certainly hope that the FOP and whatever their disagreements may be, whatever concerns that they may have about my ability or leadership, would at least expect the people of their union to not inject racism or white nationalists into the conversation.”

The union, though, told The Tribune Saturday that Rush’s comments were “ignorant, offensive, malicious and false.”

“These outrageous and irresponsible comments have demeaned each and every Chicago Police Officer, regardless of their race,” the union reportedly said.

JUSSIE SMOLLETT'S ALLEGED CHICAGO ATTACK DETAILS UNFOLD: A TIMELINE OF EVENTS

Foxx has come under fire over her office’s decision to dismiss charges against Smollett following accusations he faked a hate crime. Foxx now claims the “Empire” star did not receive any special treatment.

“I have been asking myself for the last two weeks what is this really about,” Foxx said Saturday. “As someone who has lived in this city, who came up in the projects of this city to serve as the first African American woman in this role, it is disheartening to me…that when we get in these positions somehow the goalposts change.”

Foxx reportedly mentioned in her speech that she welcomes an independent investigation into her handling of the case, saying that nearly 6,000 other "low-level defendants" received the same treatment with deferred prosecution, adding that under the law, Smollett could've been fined a maximum of $10,000 — which he effectively paid when he forfeited his bond for the same amount.

Foxx publicly recused herself from Smollett's case after communicating with one of his relatives during the police investigation into whether or not he staged an alleged hate crime against himself. But her office later said she never formally recused herself. She has received widespread criticism -- not just from the police union -- for her handling of the case.

In January, Smollett told police that two masked men attacked him, put a rope around his neck and poured bleach on him as he was walking home from a Subway restaurant. The actor, who is black and openly gay, said the masked men beat him, made racist and homophobic comments and yelled, "This is MAGA country" before fleeing the scene.

However, the Chicago Police Department alleged that Smollett paid the two men, Abel and Ola Osundairo, by check for a "phony attack" in order to take "advantage of the pain and anger of racism to promote his career." The brothers were allegedly caught on surveillance footage purchasing the rope used in the staged "attack" on Smollett.

The FBI is investigating whether Smollett sent himself a threatening hate letter to the "Empire" set, which could potentially land him behind bars for a decade for mail fraud — a federal offense.

Smollett has maintained his innocence throughout the ordeal. His attorneys previously told Fox News they've "witnessed an organized law enforcement spectacle that has no place in the American legal system. The presumption of innocence, a bedrock in the search for justice, was trampled upon at the expense of Mr. Smollett and notably, on the eve of a Mayoral election. Mr. Smollett is a young man of impeccable character and integrity who fiercely and solemnly maintains his innocence betrayed by a system that apparently wants to skip due process and proceed directly to sentencing.”

Fox News’ Jessica Sager and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source: Fox News Politics

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The Latest: Russia urges UK to observe Assange’s rights

The Latest on the arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in London (all times local):

11:15 a.m.

Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesman says Russia wants Julian Assange's rights to be observed following his arrest.

Shortly after Assange's arrest in London, Dmitry Peskov told reporters that he could not comment on the overall case.

But, he said, "We of course hope that all of his rights will be observed."

___

11 a.m.

Ecuador's president says his government withdrew asylum status for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange almost seven years after he sought refuge in Ecuador's embassy in London, citing "repeated violations of international conventions and daily-life protocols."

Lenin Moreno announced the "sovereign decision" in a statement accompanied by a video on Twitter on Thursday.

Assange hasn't left the embassy since August 2012 for fear that if he steps off Ecuador's diplomatic soil he would be arrested and extradited to the U.S. for publishing thousands of classified military and diplomatic cables through WikiLeaks.

London police arrested Assange at the embassy Thursday on a court warrant issued in 2012, when he failed to surrender to the court.

British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt thanked Moreno for breaking the impasse, saying on Twitter that  Assange "is no hero and no one is above the law."

___

10:45 a.m.

Police in London say they've arrested WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy on a court warrant dating back to 2012.

In a statement Thursday, police said Assange has been taken into "custody at a central London police station where he will remain, before being presented before Westminster Magistrates' Court as soon as is possible."

Assange hasn't left the embassy since August 2012 for fear that if he steps off Ecuador's diplomatic soil he will be arrested and extradited to the U.S. for publishing thousands of classified military and diplomatic cables through WikiLeaks.

Source: Fox News World

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Five dead, 36 injured in foot bridge collapse in Mumbai

Rescue members stand at the site of a footbridge collapse outside the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus railway station in Mumbai
Rescue members stand at the site of a footbridge collapse outside the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus railway station in Mumbai, India, March 14, 2019. REUTERS/Danish Siddiqui

March 14, 2019

By Rajendra Jadhav

MUMBAI (Reuters) – Five people were killed and 36 injured when part of a pedestrian bridge collapsed during evening rush hour on Thursday in India’s financial capital Mumbai, police said.

At least three of the dead were women, Mumbai police spokesman Manjunath Singe said. The injured have been taken to hospital.

An excavator was brought in to clear the debris that had blocked the movement of traffic on a busy road in south Mumbai. Fire engines and an ambulance were also at the site.

The bridge connects to one of Mumbai’s biggest local stations, Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, which was the site of a militant attack in 2008, and is used by tens of thousands of commuters each day.

Maharashtra state chief minister Devendra Fadnavis said on Twitter he was pained to hear about the accident and had asked municipal and police officials to ensure speedy relief efforts.

The incident brought back memories of a rush hour stampede that killed at least 22 people and injured 36 in 2017 at a busy railway station in Mumbai.

(Writing by Aditi Shah; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

Source: OANN

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House Democrats to introduce resolution to stop Trump’s emergency declaration

FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Trump declares a national emergency at the southern border during remarks at the White House in Washington
FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump declares a national emergency at the U.S.-Mexico border during remarks about border security in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, U.S., February 15, 2019. REUTERS/Carlos Barria/File Photo

February 20, 2019

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives plan to introduce a resolution on Friday to end President Donald Trump’s national emergency declaration on border security, according to aides to Representative Joaquin Castro.

So far, 92 lawmakers have joined Castro in backing the legislation, which under House rules could advance within weeks to a debate by the full chamber, which is controlled by Democrats. The move comes after Trump declared a national emergency last week to take already appropriated funds for other activities and use them to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.

(Reporting by Richard Cowan; Writing by Eric Beech; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

Source: OANN

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Employee charged with assault in Texas plant explosion

Another senior employee at a chemical company is facing criminal charges connected to a 2017 explosion at a Houston-area plant following Hurricane Harvey.

The Harris County District Attorney's office announced Wednesday that Arkema vice president of logistics Michael Keough has been indicted for felony assault.

District Attorney Kim Ogg says Keough falsely told officials that Arkema was monitoring potentially explosive chemical tanks in real time when the company had insufficient data to give early warning. Ogg says these "misrepresentations" led sheriff's deputies to drive directly into a toxic cloud, which then spread to expose citizens of Crosby, outside Houston.

A lawyer for Keough says his actions are not a crime and called the indictment "absurd" and "beyond rational thought."

Arkema and two other senior employees were charged last year.

Source: Fox News National

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Tiger woods celebrates after winning the 2019 Masters
FILE PHOTO: Golf – Masters – Augusta National Golf Club – Augusta, Georgia, U.S. – April 14, 2019 – Tiger Woods of the U.S. celebrates on the 18th hole after winning the 2019 Masters. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

April 26, 2019

Tiger Woods is sending a message that he thinks he still has enough left, emotionally and physically, to win three more major championships to tie Jack Nicklaus’ record 18 titles.

Speaking to GolfTV in his first sit-down interview since the Masters, Woods said he has taken some time off since his victory at Augusta National, which still doesn’t feel real.

“Honestly, it’s hard to believe,” Woods said. “I was texting one of my good friends last night … that I couldn’t believe that I won the tournament. That it really hasn’t sunk in. I haven’t started doing anything. I’ve just been laying there. And every now and again, I’ll look over there on the couch and there’s the jacket.”

That’s the fifth green jacket for the 43-year-old Woods, who hadn’t won a major tournament since the 2008 U.S. Open. Along the way, four back surgeries, a divorce and other personal issues derailed him.

He said he has been spending time with his children – daughter Sam, 11, and son Charlie, 10 – who weren’t born when their father was the most dominant golfer on the planet.

“They never knew golf to be a good thing in my life and only the only thing they remember is that it brought this incredible amount of pain to their dad and they don’t want to ever want to see their dad in pain,” Woods said. “And so to now have them see this side of it, the side that I’ve experienced for so many years of my life, but I had a battle to get back to this point, it feels good.”

He said he hopes – maybe expects — they’ll see this side again.

And no one will take Woods for granted at the PGA Championship at Bethpage Black Course on Long Island, N.Y., which starts May 16.

Woods said he’ll be ready for a course he already conquered once in a major: the 2002 U.S. Open.

“I’m doing all the visual stuff, but I haven’t put in the physical work yet. But it’s probably coming this weekend,” he said.

Before Woods encountered health and personal problems, it was expected that topping Nicklaus’ major mark was “when” and not “if.” Then the certainty went away, but Woods thought he still had a chance.

“I always thought it was possible, if I had everything go my way. It took him an entire career to get to 18, so now that I’ve had another extension to my career – one that I didn’t think I had a couple of years ago – if I do things correctly and everything falls my way, yeah, it’s a possibility. I’m never going to say it’s not.

“Now I just need to have a lot of things go my way, and who’s to say that it will or will not happen? That’s what the future holds, I don’t know. The only thing I can promise you is this: that I will be prepared.”

–Field Level Media

Source: OANN

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Maria Butina, the Russian woman who was accused of being a secret agent for the Russian government, was sentenced to 18 months in prison Friday by a federal judge in Washington after pleading guilty last year to a conspiracy charge.

Butina, who has already served nine months behind bars, will get credit for time served and can possibly get credit for good behavior, the judge said. She will be removed from the U.S. promptly on completion of her time, the judge added, and returned to Russia.

MARIA BUTINA, ACCUSED RUSSIAN SPY, PLEADS GUILTY TO CONSPIRACY

An emotional and apologetic Butina said in court Friday she is “truly sorry” and regrets not registering as a foreign agent.

“I feel ashamed and embarrassed,” she said, adding that her “reputation is ruined.”

Butina has been jailed since her arrest in July 2018. She entered the court Friday wearing a dark green prison jumpsuit and spoke in clear English, with a slight Russian accent.

“Please accept my apologies,” Butina said.

Butina’s lawyer, Robert Driscoll, said after the sentencing they had hoped for a “better outcome,” but expressed a desire for Butina to be released to her family by the fall.

Prosecutors had claimed Butina used her contacts with the National Rifle Association and the National Prayer Breakfast to develop relationships with U.S. politicians and gather information for Russia.

Prosecutors also have said that Butina’s boyfriend, conservative political operative Paul Erickson, identified in court papers as “U.S. Person 1,” helped her establish ties with the NRA.

WHO IS MARIA BUTINA, THE RUSSIAN WOMAN ACCUSED OF SPYING ON US?

In their filings, prosecutors claim federal agents found Butina had contact information for people suspected of being employed by Russia’s Federal Security Services, or FSB, the successor intelligence agency to the KGB. Inside her home, they found notes referring to a potential job offer from the FSB, according to the documents.

Investigators recovered several emails and Twitter direct message conversations in which Butina referred to the need to keep her work secret and, in one instance, said it should be “incognito.” Prosecutors said Butina had contact with Russian intelligence officials and that the FBI photographed her dining with a diplomat suspected of being a Russian intelligence agent.

Fox News’ Jason Donner, Bill Mears, Greg Norman and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source: Fox News Politics

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An official Sri Lankan police Twitter account was deleted after it misidentified an American human rights activist as a suspect in the country’s Easter Sunday terrorist attacks.

On Thursday, police posted the names and photos of six people that they said were at-large suspects in the bombings that killed more than 250 people.

However, one of the names on the list was Muslim U.S. activist Amara Majeed, who quickly tweeted that she had been falsely identified.

“I have this morning been FALSELY identified by the Sri Lankan government as one of the ISIS terrorists that committed the Easter attacks in Sri Lanka. What a thing to wake up to!” she wrote.

SRI LANKA AUTHORITIES SAY EASTER ATTACK LEADER KILLED IN ONE OF NINE HOTEL BOMBINGS

She wrote in a follow-up tweet that the claim was “obviously completely false” and asked social media users to “please stop implicating and associating me with these horrific attacks.”

“And next time, be more diligent about releasing such information that has the potential to deeply violate someone’s family and community,” she continued.

Later, she wrote an update saying police apologized for wrongly mistaking her as a suspect.

Police said in a statement: “However, although one of the released images was identified as one Abdul Cader Fathima Khadhiya in the information provided by the CID, the CID has now informed that a) the individual whose image was labeled as Abdul Cader Fathima Khadiya is not in fact Abdul Cader Fathima Khadiya b) the individual pictured is not wanted for questioning c) Abdul Cader Fathima is the correct name of the suspect wanted by the CID.”

On Friday, the account, @SriLankaPolice2 was deleted with no explanation. Police did not release more information regarding the mistake.

Majeed, who founded “The Hijab Project” when she was 16 years old, told the Baltimore Sun that it was hurtful to be linked to the attacks.

“Sri Lanka is my motherland,” the Brown University student said. “It’s very painful to be associated with [the bombings].”

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Mohamed Zahran, the suspected leader of the attacks which targeted six hotels and churches, killed himself in a suicide bombing at the Shangri-La hotel. Police also said they had arrested the second-in-command of the group, called National Towheed Jamaat. Catholic churches in Sri Lanka canceled all Sunday Masses until further notice over concerns that they remain a top target of Islamic State-linked extremists.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source: Fox News World

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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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