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Camembert causes stink in French parliament in row over quality rules

A box of a non-pasteurized French Camembert cheese with the pictures of French deputy Richard Ramos and Veronique Richez-Lerouge, president of Fromages de Terroirs, is seen at the National Assembly in Paris
A box of a non-pasteurized French Camembert cheese with the pictures of French deputy Richard Ramos and Veronique Richez-Lerouge, President of Fromages de Terroirs, is seen at the National Assembly in Paris, France, March 13, 2019. REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes

March 13, 2019

By Lucien Libert

PARIS (Reuters) – A row over changes to a quality label for camembert cheese reached the French parliament on Wednesday as supporters of a traditional raw-milk recipe distributed samples of the creamy, odorous speciality to lawmakers.

The cheese, which takes its name from a village in Normandy and dates back to the 18th century, is caught in a tussle between lovers of age-old cheesemaking methods based on raw milk and supporters of modern dairy practices like pasteurization.

Producers agreed a compromise last year revising terms used for the “Camembert de Normandie” protected origin scheme starting in 2021.

The deal allows industrial producers using pasteurized milk to join the quality label system in return for respecting conditions like using Normandy breed cows for some milk supply. Meanwhile, raw-milk users will be able to add a special mention on their products.

But traditionalists like lawmaker Richard Ramos say the new rules are a mistake that lead to a bland industrial product, rather than a cheese with long roots in French gastronomic heritage.

“When you open and taste a Camembert you have the idea of Frenchness,” he said as he left raw-milk cheeses in the letterboxes of his 577 colleagues at France’s National Assembly, the lower house of parliament.

In the heartland of camembert production, dairy farmer Charles Breant in the Normandy village of Bermonville shared Ramos’ concerns about the badge of quality.

“If pasteurized milk is authorized it will mean the end of the Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) because 97 or 98 percent of camembert cheeses will be pasteurized and so will lose its connection with the land,” he said.

Lactalis, the world’s largest dairy company and a regular target for critics of the new scheme, said in a statement Ramos’s initiative was misleading and failed to show Lactalis was supporting camembert both through raw and pasteurized milk.

Agriculture Minister Didier Guillaume told lawmakers he supported the revamped quality scheme, which he said was “not a Trojan horse for industrial firms”.

“Raw-milk camembert is not in danger,” he said.

(Reporting by Lucien Libert, writing by Gus Trompiz; Editing by Leigh Thomas and Peter Graff)

Source: OANN

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20 detained at protests in Kazakhstan

Media reports say that more two dozen people have been detained in Kazakhstan's capital over a proposed name change.

The parliament in this Central Asian nation voted earlier this week to change the name of the capital Astana to Nursultan after the outgoing long-time president. The new president will have to sign the decree to make the change official.

The Interfax news agency and other local media reported on Friday that some 20 people have been detained in the commercial capital Almaty to protest the name change. More people were detained in Astana and Almaty on Thursday amid scuffles with police.

President Nursultan Nazarbayev abruptly resigned on Tuesday after nearly 30 years at the helm of this oil-rich country.

Source: Fox News World

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Infighting hampers analysis of Ethiopian Airlines flight recorders, source says

Infighting among entities involved in the Ethiopian Airlines air disaster probe has hampered analysis of the plane’s damaged black boxes by France’s BEA air accident investigation agency, Fox News has learned.

Arguments broke out Thursday as the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder arrived at the BEA near Paris for analysis, according to a source who spoke to American investigators there.

The source reported being told that the American investigators left the BEA Thursday night after 12 hours of "doing nothing."

FAA GROUNDS BOEING 737 MAX 8, 737 MAX 9 PLANES FOLLOWING DEADLY ETHIOPIAN AIRLINES CRASH

The United Nations International Civil Aviation Organization has protocols for examination, custody and cooperation among the investigators involved in a civil aviation accident but those protocols are being ignored, according to the source.

The source who spoke to the American investigators also reported being told that the crash site in Hejere had been ransacked by locals before it was secured.

Photo shows one of the black box flight recorder from the crashed Ethiopian Airlines jet. (BEA via AP)

Photo shows one of the black box flight recorder from the crashed Ethiopian Airlines jet. (BEA via AP)

“The scene has been badly compromised,” the source told Fox News. “Positioning is important and that’s been disrupted.”

The report of friction comes as the BEA said Friday that its analysis of the flight recorders had begun.

French officials have said it was unclear whether information could be retrieved due to the damaged condition of the recorders. Ethiopian authorities are leading the crash probe and it will also include the U.S. National Transporation Safety Board.

ETHIOPIAN CRASH INVESTIGATORS FIND PIECE OF WRECKAGE SIMILAR TO ILL-FATED LION AIR PLANE, REPORT SAYS

Also Friday, The New York Times reported that the pilot requested permission "in a panicky voice" to return to the airport shortly after takeoff as the plane dipped up and down sharply and appeared to gain a startling amount of speed.

The report cited "a person who reviewed air traffic communications" from Sunday's flight saying controllers noticed the plane was moving up and down by hundreds of feet.

Sunday’s plane crashed minutes after takeoff outside Addis Ababa, killing all 157 on board, including eight Americans.

It was the second crash involving a Boeing 737 Max 8 jet in six months. A crash just after takeoff in Indonesia in October killed 189 people.

The headquarters of the BEA is pictured in Le Bourget, north of Paris, Thursday, March 14, 2019. The French air accident investigation authority, known by its French acronym BEA, is now handling the analysis of the so-called black box flight recorders from the Ethiopian Airlines jet that crashed earlier this week. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)

The headquarters of the BEA is pictured in Le Bourget, north of Paris, Thursday, March 14, 2019. The French air accident investigation authority, known by its French acronym BEA, is now handling the analysis of the so-called black box flight recorders from the Ethiopian Airlines jet that crashed earlier this week. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)

Countries -- including the United States -- have grounded the Boeing 737 Max 8 as Boeing faces the challenge of proving the jets are safe to fly amid suspicions that faulty software might have contributed to the two crashes. The company on Friday announced a possible software fix to be complete within 10 days.

The decision to send the flight recorders from the Ethiopia crash to France was seen as a rebuke to the U.S., which held out longer than most other countries in grounding the jets, finally giving the order Thursday afternoon. Peter Goelz, a former managing director of the NTSB who is now an aviation consultant, said that late call by the Federal Aviation Administration may indeed have been a factor.

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“I can’t speak for the Ethiopians,” Goelz said. “I’m sure that was under consideration that the FAA was adamant until they weren’t. I think Ethiopia wanted to choose an investigative partner that clearly didn’t have a dog in the fight.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source: Fox News World

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Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax releases polygraph results, reiterates claim of innocence

Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax on Wednesday released the results of a polygraph test he said he took in response to two accusations of sexual misconduct by two separate women.

“Today, I am providing the full report of my polygraph examinations to the media so that all Virginians can read the report themselves,” he said in a news conference held in his office, WTKR-TV of Norfolk reported.

VIRGINIA REPUBLICANS SEEK TESTIMONY FROM JUSTIN FAIRFAX ACCUSERS BEFORE HOUSE COMMITTEE

Fairfax again denied the accusations, saying, “they are incredibly hurtful to me and my family and my reputation, which I have spent a lifetime building.”

In February, a woman named Vanessa Tyson accused Fairfax of forcing her to perform oral sex on him in a Boston hotel room while they were at the Democratic National Convention. Another woman, Meredith Watson, accused him of raping her while they were students at Duke University in 2000.

Fairfax maintains that both encounters were “completely consensual” and said that the women were “willing participants," according to WTKR.

Fairfax's polygraph examination was conducted by Hanafin Polygraph Services of Arlington, Va., the same expert who administered a polygraph to Justice Brett Kavanaugh accuser Christine Blasey Ford last year.

A statement from Alan J. Jennerich of the American Polygraph Association said that in his professional opinion Fairfax’s answers to questions of whether he engaged in non-consensual activity with either woman are “not indicative of deception," WTKR reported.

Fairfax added that he will cooperate fully with any investigations and is willing to go under oath.

He concluded the news conference by saying he looks forward to clearing his name and returning to work and left without taking reporters’ questions, according to WTKR.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

The accusations against Fairfax coincided with the emergence of a college yearbook photo appearing to show Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam in racist attire at a party during the 1980s. Northam initially issued an apology then denied it was him in the photo.

Source: Fox News Politics

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Israel’s Netanyahu says he plans to annex settlements in West Bank

FILE PHOTO: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during a meeting with NATO countries' ambassadors to Israel in Jerusalem
FILE PHOTO: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during a meeting with NATO countries' ambassadors to Israel in Jerusalem January 9, 2018. REUTERS/Ammar Awad/File Photo

April 6, 2019

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Saturday that he would annex settlements in the occupied West Bank if he wins another term in office in an election on Tuesday.

In an interview to Israeli Channel 12 News, Netanyahu was asked why he hadn’t extended Israeli sovereignty to large West Bank settlements, as it has done in East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, other territory seized in a 1967 war.

“You are asking whether we are moving on to the next stage – the answer is yes, we will move to the next stage. I am going to extend (Israeli) sovereignty,” he said.

(Reporting by Maayan Lubell; Editing by Peter Graff)

Source: OANN

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U.S. home purchase sentiment rises to nine-month high: Fannie Mae

FILE PHOTO: Homes are seen for sale in the southwest area of Portland
FILE PHOTO: Homes are seen for sale in the southwest area of Portland, Oregon March 20, 2014. REUTERS/Steve Dipaola/File Photo

April 8, 2019

NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. consumer sentiment for buying a home rose to its strongest in nine months as a result of a sturdy jobs market and a decline in mortgage rates so far this year, according to data released by Fannie Mae on Monday.

The federal mortgage agency said its home purchase sentiment index increased by 5.5 points to 89.8 points, its highest since last June.

Notably, Fannie Mae’s latest data showed the net share of consumers surveyed in March who said it is a good time to sell a home jumped 13 points to 43%.

A net share of 22% of consumers said it is a good time to buy a home, up 7 points from the month before.

The net share of consumers surveyed who said they are not concerned about losing their jobs fell 1 point to 80% from February’s 81%, which was the highest since the survey began in 2010.

Last Friday, the U.S. Labor Department said employers hired 196,000 workers in March, up from a revised 33,000 a month earlier, while average hourly earnings grew only 0.1% versus a 0.4% jump in February.

Moreover, the share of consumers who said mortgage rates will rise over the next 12 months surpassed those who thought home borrowing costs would decline was a difference of 45 percentage points.

The average 30-year home loan rate last week edged up 4.08% from prior week’s 4.06%, which was a 14-month low, Freddie Mac said on Thursday.

(Reporting by Richard Leong; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)

Source: OANN

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Exclusive: Airbus China order padded by old or incomplete deals – sources

FILE PHOTO: The Airbus logo is pictured at Airbus headquarters in Blagnac near Toulouse
FILE PHOTO: The Airbus logo is pictured at Airbus headquarters in Blagnac near Toulouse, France, March 20, 2019. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau/File Photo

April 2, 2019

PARIS (Reuters) – A landmark order from China for 300 Airbus jets signed during a state visit last week was bolstered by repeat announcements of dozens of existing deals and advance approval for deals that are not yet completed, two people familiar with the matter said.

Echoing an umbrella order for 300 Boeing jets awarded during a visit to Beijing by U.S. President Donald Trump in 2017, the headline figure for the new “framework order” for European jets was partly driven by political considerations, the people said.

The Airbus deal would have been worth some $35 billion at list prices but the amount of new business is lower, they added. Duplicate announcements included a deal for 10 A350 aircraft to an unnamed buyer, which represents a repeat announcement of an order for 10 jets by Sichuan Airlines at an air show last year.

The disclosure takes some of the shine off an announcement seen as the economic highlight of a trip to Europe by Chinese President Xi Jinping, but does mark a return to the aircraft market by China’s state buying agency after a pause of over a year during global trade tensions.

Airbus declined to comment on detailed orders but left open the possibility that the large deal contained gaps.

The agreement “creates the approval framework for aircraft ordered by Chinese airlines, be it existing orders or future orders,” a spokesman said in response to a Reuters query.

(Reporting by Tim Hepher; Editing by Bate Felix/Sudip Kar-Gupta)

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].”

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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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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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