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Japan’s 10-day break to fete new emperor may breathe life into economy

FILE PHOTO : Holidaymakers view thousands of carp streamaers in Sagamihara, Japan.
FILE PHOTO : Holidaymakers view thousands of carp streamers hanging on the bank of the Sagami river in Sagamihara, southwest of Tokyo May 3, 2005. REUTERS/Issei Kato

April 23, 2019

By Malcolm Foster

TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan’s unprecedented 10-day holiday to celebrate Crown Prince Naruhito’s enthronement is expected to give the sluggish economy at least a short-term boost.

Breweries, hotels, retailers, restaurants and train operators are all expected to benefit from the holiday, which runs from April 27 to May 6. Banks, schools, government offices and many businesses will be closed.

A record 24.7 million people – about one-fifth the country’s population – are expected to travel, according to travel agency JTB Corp., mostly within the country.

“Japanese are in a festive mood, with the new imperial era beginning and the 10-day break,” said Yoshiie Horii, a spokesman for brewer Asahi Group, which is increasing production of several brands by 5-10 percent ahead of the break. “We think this holiday will spur consumer spending.”

Japan has a cluster of national holidays every year around this time dubbed “Golden Week.” But this year, authorities gave the nation an extended vacation to fete the imperial succession.

After a 31-year reign, Emperor Akihito will abdicate on April 30 and be replaced by his son Naruhito the next day.

Japanese have made travel plans months ahead of time, creating intense competition for popular destinations such as Hawaii and Europe. Akiko Nishikata’s family tried in November to reserve a package tour to Hawaii for Golden Week but were told they were sold out.

“This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to go on a long trip, so we’re disappointed,” Nishikata said. Instead, they’ll travel to either Hokkaido in the north or Kyushu in the south.

Also, because the imperial transition is triggered by Akihito’s abdication, not his death, consumers don’t feel a need to hold back due to mourning.

To mark the new era, department stores in Tokyo plan to offer limited quantities of commemorative items on May 1, including traditional sweets with “Hello, Reiwa” on them and confections sprinkled with powdered gold.

TAX HIKE

The expected economic bump from the long holiday will boost second-quarter GDP growth and give Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government another reason to proceed with a planned sales tax increase in October, said Hideo Kumano, chief economist at Dai-ichi Life Research Institute.

Kumano estimates that domestic travel spending will jump nearly 30 percent from a year ago to 1.48 trillion yen ($13.3 billion).

“In March, there was a lot of talk about a recession, but that’s completely disappeared with buzz from the announcement of Reiwa on April 1,” he said. “May 1 will be even bigger.”

Overall consumer spending during the 10 days is forecast to rise 7.6 percent compared with a year ago and contribute a quarter percentage point to GDP, said Koya Miyamae, senior economist at SMBC Nikko Securities.

But other analysts cautioned that an increase would probably be followed by a drop in consumption, making the long-term impact negligible.

“A spending boost, if any, will be short-lived,” said Masaki Kuwahara, senior economist at Nomura Securities.

Manufacturers generally don’t expect the longer holiday to have a big impact. Toyota, for example, says its plants are usually closed for nine days during Golden Week, and it is doing the same this year.

Computer systems companies and other businesses may see a dip in sales because of lost workdays, but a Reuters survey of about 220 companies showed that nearly half didn’t expect the long break to affect their business. About 28 percent predicted a decline in output or sales while a quarter projected a rise.

JITTERY TRADERS

Hospitals will alternate operating hours during the break, as is typical during holidays. Tokyo residents can visit a website to see which hospitals are taking patients, and find more detailed information.

Financial market traders, meanwhile, are worried that the 10-day shutdown could cause disruptions and unsettle the yen.

The U.S. jobs report and several other key events will happen while the market is closed, said Shogo Maekawa, global market strategist at JPMorgan Asset Management.

“It’s a risk that we can’t trade for 10 days even if something volatile happens in overseas markets,” he said.

($1 = 111.6900 yen)

(Reporting and writing by Malcolm Foster; additional reporting by Tetsushi Kajimoto, Naomi Tajitsu, Izumi Nakagawa, Ayai Tomisawa; Editing by Gerry Doyle)

Source: OANN

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German exports, imports drop more than expected in February

FILE PHOTO: Aerial view of containers at a loading terminal in the port of Hamburg
FILE PHOTO: Aerial view of containers at a loading terminal in the port of Hamburg, Germany August 1, 2018. REUTERS/Fabian Bimmer/File Photo

April 8, 2019

BERLIN (Reuters) – German exports and imports both fell more than expected in February, data showed on Monday, in the latest sign that Europe’s largest economy is likely to post meager growth in the first quarter.

The Federal Statistics Office said seasonally adjusted exports dropped by 1.3 percent on the month while imports were down 1.6 percent. That meant the trade surplus edged up to 18.7 billion euros ($20.99 billion) from a revised 18.6 billion euros the previous month.

A Reuters poll of economists had pointed to a 0.5 percent decrease in exports and a 0.7 percent decline in imports. The trade surplus was expected to narrow to 18.0 billion euros.

(Reporting by Michael Nienaber; Editing by Michelle Martin)

Source: OANN

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Rep. Clyburn: Democrats moving on from Mueller, but still want to see the full report

Democrats are moving on from the Mueller investigation and calls to impeach President Trump, but they still want to see the special counsel's full report House Majority Whip James Clyburn, D-S.C. said.

Clyburn called for the release of the full Mueller report during an appearance on “Outnumbered Overtime" Tuesday afternoon.

“We want to see the full report, give us the full report, let us make up our own minds. We do have brains on our side of the aisle,” Clyburn said when asked about the call for the full report to be released by April 2nd.

WATCH FOX NEWS’ LIVE COVERAGE

Host Harris Faulkner asked Clyburn why Democrats continue to focus on the Mueller report and not move on to other issues.

“We are moving on,” Clyburn responded before mentioning the Affordable Care Act, rural broadband deployment and infrastructure as issues his party is focused on.

“You’re the one camping out with Mueller. We’ve gone on from that,” Clyburn told Faulkner.

Faulkner defended her questioning saying that six Democratic committee heads have called for the full Mueller report to be released before ending the segment for breaking news.

TRUMP IMPEACHMENT BACKERS NOT GIVING UP AFTER MUELLER REPORT

Earlier in the segment, Clyburn dismissed freshman congresswoman Rashida Tlaib’s, D-Mich., efforts to introduce a resolution that would investigate President Trump for possible “impeachable offenses.”

“They do what they think they have to do,” Clyburn said. “No one can stop me from introducing whatever resolution I want to introduce. I don’t have to get a vote on it. I don’t have to get support for it but you’re free to do it.”

Clyburn also responded to reports that President Trump’s Department of Justice is introducing a lawsuit declaring the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional.

“That runs awry… the president said time and time again, he told us he will protect people with preexisting conditions. No, you’re saying the one law that protects people with preexisting conditions, his justice department… is now asking the supreme court to get rid of it,” Clyburn said.

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“It seems to me the president is not being consistent here.”

Source: Fox News Politics

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ING shareholders vote down motion on management liability at AGM

The logo of ING bank is pictured at the entrance of the group's main office in Brussels
FILE PHOTO: The logo of ING bank is pictured at the entrance of the group's main office in Brussels, Belgium September 5, 2017. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir

April 23, 2019

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – Shareholders of Dutch bank ING on Tuesday voted against a motion granting executives discharge from legal liability for 2018, the company said, in an apparent rebuke for the $900 million fine the company incurred in September for failing to prevent money laundering.

It was not clear whether any shareholders will actually seek damages over the fine, which ING has said was properly disclosed and which did not have a major impact on the company’s share price. The company said in a statement shareholders had approved other motions at its annual meeting on Tuesday.

(Reporting by Toby Sterling; editing by David Evans)

Source: OANN

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US-backed Syrian force declares victory over Islamic State; end of caliphate

U.S.-backed Syrian forces declared victory over the Islamic State after announcing Saturday they had liberated the last ISIS stronghold in the eastern village of Baghouz and put an end to its self-declared Islamic caliphate.

"Baghouz is free and the military victory against Daesh has been achieved," tweeted Mustafa Bali, a spokesman for the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), referring to ISIS by its Arabic acronym.

LAST ISIS ENCLAVE A SCENE OF ‘DEVASTATION:’ FOX NEWS VISITS ONLY REMAINING VILLAGE RULED BY TERROR GROUP

The final offensive by SDF forces marks an end to the Islamic State’s self-declared caliphate and comes after President Trump said militants no longer control territory in Syria. None of the main surviving ISIS leaders were caught in Baghouz.

The offensive saw U.S.-backed forces attacking ISIS, pushing its fighters from house to house and tent to tent against the Euphrates River, according to reports. The battle stretched several weeks and sent thousands fleeing the territory and hundreds killed.

Ciya Kobani, an SDF commander, announced the end of the operation from the rooftop: "We have been victorious against Daesh," he declared.

The SDF has asked the U.S. for support in setting up tribunals to prosecute captured militants. An encampment at Baghouz where ISIS made its last stand was littered with charred vehicles, torn tents and burned trees. Scattered in the dirt were personal belongings, oil barrels, water tanks and other items.

I'VE HUNTED ISIS, AND THEY ARE FAR FROM DONE

At its height, ISIS consumed a third of both Syria and neighboring Iraq. The U.S. and Syrian forces have spent five years – spanning two presidencies – fighting to take back territory held by the group. The campaign saw more than 100,000 bombs unleashed and untold numbers of fighter and civilian deaths.

ISIS continues to launch attacks in both countries but no longer holds any territory. During its reign, the group ruled with an iron fist by imposing a harsh version of Islamic law through crucifixions, beheadings and large-scale massacres documented by video and posted online.

Smoke rises from a strike on Baghouz, Syria, on the Islamic State group's last piece of territory on Friday, March 22, 2019. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)

Smoke rises from a strike on Baghouz, Syria, on the Islamic State group's last piece of territory on Friday, March 22, 2019. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)

In 2014, ISIS fighters captured thousands of Yazidi women and girls in Iraq’s Sinjar region and forced many of them into sexual slavery. Many remain missing.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

It also acted as a government where it built infrastructure and regulated market prices. The group used its caliphate as a pretext for attacks throughout the world, including Paris in 2015 that killed more than 130 people.

It still maintains affiliates in Egypt, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

Source: Fox News World

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Report: Nearly 100K Undocumented Students Graduate From US High Schools Annually

Nearly 100,000 undocumented students graduate from U.S. high schools every year without access to DACA protections, resulting in limited job opportunities and access to higher education, according to an analysis released Wednesday by the Migration Policy Institute.

MPI, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, D.C., pulled from census data for its report.

Congress has yet to act on bills that would offer a pathway to legal status for those graduates despite efforts by lawmakers dating back to 2001.

And under President Donald Trump, no new applications are being accepted for DACA, which allows college and work opportunities for children without fear of deportation.

Former President Barack Obama launched the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program in 2012, and as of January, almost 700,000 young immigrants had benefited from it.

“Those two combined factors really opened up opportunities for them to work in more interesting and well-paid, stable jobs and they didn’t have to be watching over their shoulders,” said Jeanne Batalova, who co-authored the Migration Policy Institute report. “It also gave confidence to employers that these are workers that they could confidently hire and invest in because their status is solid.”

In 2017, the Trump administration tried to end DACA but was stopped by federal courts. Current recipients can renew their applications every two years.

Of the 98,000 high school graduates, 44% of them reside in California and Texas. The number of graduates rose from 65,000 in 2003.

Source: NewsMax America

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North Carolina accused in wife's death appears in court

A North Carolina man accused of killing his wife has appeared in court to face a murder charge after being captured in Arizona.

WRAL-TV reports that 57-year-old Rexford Lynn Keel Jr. requested a court-appointed attorney and made no statements during a brief hearing on Tuesday.

Keel was arrested March 17 in Arizona on an arrest warrant accusing him of killing his 38-year-old wife.

Diana Alejandra Keel went missing March 9. Her body was found in another North Carolina county. Nash County Sheriff Keith Stone said it appears she died of multiple stab wounds, and that he wants to take a closer look at the 2006 death of Keel's first wife, which was ruled an accidental fall.

Keel's next hearing is scheduled for April 11.

___

Information from: WRAL-TV, http://www.wral.com

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].”

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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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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