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Aaron Rodgers: ‘I lost vision’ after Week 17 concussion

NFL: Green Bay Packers at Dallas Cowboys
FILE PHOTO: Oct 8, 2017; Arlington, TX, USA; Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers (12) celebrates with tight end Richard Rodgers (82) after scoring the winning touchdown at AT&T Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Tim Heitman-USA TODAY Sports

April 9, 2019

Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers said Tuesday that he “lost vision” after suffering a concussion in the final game of last season.

In an interview with ESPN Milwaukee radio, Rodgers said it was the first time he’s ever removed himself from a game.

“It’s disappointing how it ended, getting that concussion was disappointing and also a little scary, honestly. I couldn’t see. I lost vision, definitely peripheral,” Rodgers told ESPN about the injury he incurred after a sack against the Detroit Lions.

Rodgers also went into detail about the knee injury he suffered in Week 1 and then reinjured in Week 5. Rodgers left the game against the Chicago Bears but returned to engineer the 20-point comeback victory.

Rodgers called it an “indent fracture.”

“I had a tibial plateau fracture and obviously an MCL sprain,” Rodgers told ESPN. “So that was very painful. If you watch the hit back, just my two bones here that come together on the outside just kind of made an indent fracture. Very painful.”

Rodgers did not require surgery and said he returned from a vacation in New Zealand feeling “incredible.”

Rodgers said he’s “excited about working” with new coach Matt LaFleur.

“I think any great quarterback-to-play-caller relationship is a good partnership. We both know who the boss is and it’s him. But it works better when it’s a partnership,” Rodgers told ESPN.

–Field Level Media

Source: OANN

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Reputed Gambino crime boss killed in New York City tried dodging bullets by hiding under SUV, cops say

The reputed boss of New York’s Gambino crime family who was shot to death in front of his home tried to hide under his own SUV during the shooting, according to new reports.

Police said Thursday they were reviewing surveillance-camera video of the attack on Francesco “Franky Boy” Cali, 53, who was gunned down Wednesday night at his red-brick colonial-style house in a quiet Staten Island neighborhood. The shooter sped off in a pickup truck, police said. No immediate arrests were made.

“What I believe happened was Mr. Cali was struck several times by gunfire. In trying to elude additional gunfire, fled to the rear area of his private vehicle and somebody probably thought he was run over, but it was more he was trying to get underneath the truck to elude gunfire,” Chief of Detectives Dermott Shea told reporters at a news conference, as The New York Post reported.

The mobster emerged from his home around 9:15 p.m. after the gunman backed his pickup into Cali’s Cadillac SUV, damaging it, according to police. “With what we know at this point in time, it’s quite possible that was part of a plan,” Shea said.

Video showed the attacker pulling a 9 mm handgun and opening fire on Cali about a minute after they started talking, according to Shea. At least 12 shots were fired. After he was shot several times, Cali tried to crawl under his SUV to hide, Shea said.

Footage seemed to show that Cali had been drawn out of his house after a pickup truck backed into the SUV, forcing the license plate to detach, a law-enforcement official who saw the video told the Daily Beast.

WOMAN GUZZLES DOWN 6-PACK OF BEER INSIDE TARGET DRESSING ROOM, STEALS $200 IN MERCHANDISE, COPS SAY

Aggressive federal prosecutions in the past 25 years have decimated the ranks of New York’s five Mafia families. The cases resulted in long prison terms for their bosses — Cali’s swaggering 1980s-era predecessor John Gotti included — and encouraged their successors to keep a lower profile.

But, the new generation still has engaged in old-school crimes — loansharking, gambling, extortion — that can make enemies and spark bloodshed.

Shea said there has been a slight uptick in alleged mob-related violence in New York within the last year.

But, he said it was too soon to say whether that had anything to do with Cali’s slaying.

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Federal prosecutors referred to Cali in court filings in recent years as the underboss of the Mafia’s Gambino family, once one of the most powerful and feared crime organizations in the country. News accounts since 2015 said he had ascended to the top spot.

The last Mafia boss to be rubbed out in New York City was Gambino don “Big Paul” Castellano, assassinated at Gotti’s direction while getting out of a black limousine outside a high-end Manhattan steakhouse in 1985. Gotti then took control of the family.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Click for more from The New York Post.

Source: Fox News National

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U.S. allows more time to wind down Venezuela state oil firm’s debt

FILE PHOTO: FILE PHOTO: Cutouts depicting images of oil operations are seen outside a building of Venezuela's state oil company PDVSA in Caracas
FILE PHOTO: Cutouts depicting images of oil operations are seen outside a building of Venezuela's state oil company PDVSA in Caracas, Venezuela January 28, 2019. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins/File Photo/File Photo

March 8, 2019

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States is giving individuals and entities more time to wind down certain financial contracts or other agreements related to debt involving Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) said on Friday.

“OFAC is extending the expiration date of provisions relating to the wind down of certain financial contracts or other agreements involving, or linked to” certain listed bonds “or to certain Petroleos de Venezuela, S.A. securities,” the department said in a notice on its website, referring to Venezuelan state-oil firm PDVSA.

Contracts involving PDVSA debt must now be wound down by May 10, an extension of the March 11 deadline that was established in early February.

Washington this week revoked the visas of senior Venezuelan officials and said on Wednesday it had identified efforts by Maduro to work with foreign banks to move and hide money.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s special representative for Venezuela pledged on Thursday that Washington would “expand the net” of sanctions on the South American nation, including more on banks supporting President Nicolas Maduro’s government.

The United States and more than 50 other countries have recognized opposition leader Juan Guaido as Venezuela’s interim president and increased pressure on Maduro, a socialist, to step down.

On Friday, Venezuela shut schools and suspended the workday as the worst blackout in decades paralyzed most of the troubled nation for a second day.

(Reporting by Susan Heavey and Lisa Lambert; Writing by Nick Zieminski; Editing by Franklin Paul and Paul Simao)

Source: OANN

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China will open further to foreign investment: premier assures global executives

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang speaks at a news conference following the closing session of the National People's Congress (NPC) at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang speaks at a news conference following the closing session of the National People's Congress (NPC) at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China March 15, 2019. REUTERS/Jason Lee

March 26, 2019

BEIJING (Reuters) – Chinese Premier Li Keqiang reaffirmed Beijing’s pledge to further open up to foreign investment as he met with global business executives, and sought to assure them that the rights of foreign firms would be protected.

China is committed to providing foreign investors and companies with a more open and transparent business environment, along with guarantees of intellectual property rights protection and no forced technology transfers, Li told the executives the sidelines of the China Development Forum.

Top executives from Daimler, IBM, BMW, Pfizer, Rio Tinto met with Li at the close of the three-day forum, according to a statement on the government’s website late on Monday.

The premier also answered questions on U.S.-China trade relations, but the statement did not elaborate.

The U.S. trade team say they are in the final stages of negotiating what would be the biggest economic policy agreement with China in decades.

U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin head to Beijing this week to try to accelerate talks with Chinese Vice Premier Liu He, while Liu is set to travel to Washington for another round of negotiations in early April.

The United States says China engages in systematic intellectual property theft, forces foreign firms to give up trade secrets for market access, and spends huge sums subsidizing its own industry.

China’s industry minister said on Monday that the government will reduce direct intervention in the country’s vast industrial sector, seeking to ease concerns about its industrial policy.

But China has not given up on a long-term plan to build up its higher-value manufacturing prowess.

“China encourages the development of new technologies and industries to create space for innovation and development,” Li told the global executives.

China will not allow innovation to be “killed” just as it emerges, Li said.

The premier also sought to assure the executives that China will be able to withstand pressure on its economy.

China will keep the economy growing within a reasonable range, he said.

The government is targeting economic growth of 6-6.5 percent this year. Growth cooled to 6.6 percent in 2018, a 28-year low.

(Reporting by Stella Qiu and Ryan Woo; Editing by Kim Coghill)

Source: OANN

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Taiwan March export orders seen dropping for fifth straight month: Reuters poll

FILE PHOTO: Shipping containers are seen at Keelung port, northern Taiwan,
FILE PHOTO: Shipping containers are seen at Keelung port, northern Taiwan, March 20, 2016. . REUTERS/Tyrone Siu

April 19, 2019

TAIPEI (Reuters) – Taiwan’s export orders likely declined for a fifth month in March but at a slower pace than in the previous month, a Reuters poll showed, as a prolonged downturn in global tech demand hurts manufacturers in the trade-reliant economy.

The median forecast from the poll of 14 economists was for March export orders to drop 5.45 percent from a year earlier. Forecasts ranged from a decline of 10.3 percent to growth of 3.5 percent.

In February, Taiwan’s export orders fell 10.9 percent, the most in nearly three years due to cautious machinery orders from China as the United States-China trade dispute wears on, pointing to a further slowdown for the island’s economy.

Taiwan export orders are an indicator of demand for Asia’s hi-tech gadgets, and typically lead actual exports by two to three months.

(Poll compiled by Carol Lee; Reporting by Yimou Lee; Editing by Richard Borsuk)

Source: OANN

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Seychelles president’s underwater speech: Protect our oceans

In a striking speech delivered from deep below the ocean's surface, the Seychelles president is making a global plea for stronger protection of the "beating blue heart of our planet."

President Danny Faure's call for action, the first-ever live speech from an underwater submersible, comes from one of the many island nations threatened by global warming.

The president is speaking during a visit to an ambitious British-led science expedition exploring the Indian Ocean depths. Oceans cover over two-thirds of the world's surface but remain, for the most part, uncharted.

Faure's speech says that "this issue is bigger than all of us, and we cannot wait for the next generation to solve it. We are running out of excuses to not take action, and running out of time."

Source: Fox News World

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Nation’s heaviest trafficked illegal crossing sector sees surge in apprehensions

Total immigration apprehensions in Texas' Rio Grande Valley, the nation’s heaviest trafficked illegal crossing sector, has surged in the past months, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) revealed in a statement Monday.

CBP reported: “Less than seven months into the fiscal year, the Rio Grande Valley Sector of the U.S. Border Patrol Sector has apprehended more than 164,000 people to date, surpassing the total number of apprehensions made in fiscal year 2018.”

The statement also pointed out that border patrol agents in the region arrest over 1,100 people each day on average.

NEW MEXICO COUNTY DECLARES STATE OF EMERGENCY OVER SURGE OF ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS CROSSING THE BORDER

The agency has been devoting more resources to the surging numbers of migrant families crossing the southern border.

The Border Patrol is apprehending thousands of families weekly at the U.S.-Mexico border. Many of them are parents and children fleeing Central America and seeking asylum.

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Nationwide, CBP, as reported in March, has 23,000 officers working at 328 ports of entry, including at airports around the country.

However, the agency has had the most trouble recruiting officers to work at the southern border, where crossings were understaffed before the current surge of migrant families.

Fox News' Griff Jenkins and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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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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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