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Detained Saudi women's rights activists brought to court

Several women's rights activists arrested in Saudi Arabia have been brought to court on unknown charges after being detained in a crackdown last year.

Amnesty International says that those brought to court included Loujain al-Hathloul, who has said she was abused and threatened with death while in detention because of her activism.

The watchdog said others included Eman al-Nafjan and Aziza al-Yousef.

Saudi state media didn't immediately acknowledge the hearing on Wednesday.

Al-Hathloul's brother, Walid, as well as Amnesty, said their court appearance was moved to a criminal court from one specialized for terrorism cases.

Amnesty's Samah Hadid said it was "quite concerning that they are likely to be charged for simply defending women's rights."

The group has previously said several detainees have been beaten and tortured during interrogations.

Source: Fox News World

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Algeria: Opposition meets, teachers protest, tension simmers

Algerian teachers are demonstrating against their longtime president as political uncertainty grips this gas-rich North African country.

Teachers gathered Wednesday outside the central post office in the capital, Algiers, to protest President Abdelaziz Bouteflika's decision to delay next month's election. Algerian media reported teachers' protests in other cities too.

Opposition parties also held a joint meeting in Algiers to plot next steps.

An unprecedented revolt forced Bouteflika to abandon plans to seek a fifth term. But he also canceled the election without setting a new date.

Protesters demanded Wednesday that Bouteflika step down now, or at the latest when his current term ends next month. Algerians have barely seen their president since he suffered a stroke in 2013, and protesters are also angry about corruption and secrecy in Algeria's power structure.

Source: Fox News World

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Athletics: Semenya gets Van Niekerk backing as she targets longer distance

South Africa's 400m Olympic gold medallist and world record holder Wayde van Niekerk looks on as he attends South African Championships in Germiston
South Africa's 400m Olympic gold medallist and world record holder Wayde van Niekerk looks on as he attends South African Championships in Germiston, South Africa, April 25, 2019. REUTERS/Siphiwe Sibeko

April 26, 2019

GERMISTON, South Africa (Reuters) – Olympic 400 meters champion Wayde van Niekerk has backed South African compatriot Caster Semenya in her battle with the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), which now appears to have taken a new twist.

Semenya, a double 800 meters Olympic gold medalist, is waiting for the outcome of her appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) to halt the introduction of new regulations by governing body IAAF that would require her to take medicine to limit her natural levels of testosterone.

The IAAF wants female athletes with differences of sexual development who run in events from 400 meters to a mile, to reduce their blood testosterone level to below five (5) nmol/L for a period of six months before they can compete, saying they have an unfair advantage.

“She’s fighting for something beyond just track and field, she’s fighting for woman in sports, in society and I respect her for that,” Van Niekerk told reporters.

“I will support her and with the hard work and talent that she’s been putting into the sport. With what she believes in and what she’s dreaming for, I’ve got a lot of respect for her.

“I really hope and pray that everything just goes from strength to strength for her.”

Semenya has sprung a surprise at the on-going South African Athletics Championships though, ditching the 800 meters and instead competing over 1,500 and 5,000-metres – the latter one would not require her to medically lower her testosterone level.

She stormed to victory in the 5,000-metres final in a modest time of 16:05.97, but looked to have lots left in the tank as she passed the finish line.

Semenya beat fellow Olympian and defending national 5,000m champion Dominique Scott in Thursday’s final but the latter admitted she is unsure whether the 800m specialist could be a serious Olympic contender over the longer distance.

“Honestly‚ I have no idea‚” Scott said. “Before today I probably would have said no. It’s hard to compare a 5,000 at altitude to a 5,000 at sea level.

“But I think she’s an amazing runner and I don’t think there’s any limit or ceiling on what she can do.”

Van Niekerk, the 400m world record holder, had to abort his comeback from a knee injury, that had sidelined him for 18 months, following a combination of cold weather and a wet track.

“We are trying to take the correct decisions now early in the year so as not to put myself in any harm,” he said.

“It was a bit chilly this entire week prepping and coming through here as well it was quite cold and it caused bit of tightness in my leg. We decided to not risk it.

“My recovery is going well and I would like to be back in competition this year, but will only do so if I can deliver a good performance.

“I am a competitor and respect my opponents, so I need to be at my best when I return.”

(Reporting by Nick Said, additional reporting by Siyabonga Sishi; editing by Sudipto Ganguly)

Source: OANN

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Johnny Cash and Daisy Gatson Bates to replace controversial Confederate-era statues in the Capitol

The Man in Black lives on -- and not only through his music.

A statue of country music legend Johnny Cash has been chosen, along with prominent civil rights leader Daisy Gatson Bates, to represent the state of Arkansas in the National Statuary Hall of the Capitol Building – taking the place of two contentious Confederate-era figures.

“Almost everyone who was involved in the discussion agreed we needed to update the statues with representatives of our more recent history,” Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson stated upon signing the bill to make the changes last week. “But there were many opinions about which historic figures best represented our state. The debate was lively and healthy.”

FLORIDA CITY DISMANTLES, RELOCATES CONFEDERATE STATUE

In the end, Cash and Bates were declared the winners to replace the statues of Uriah Rose and James Paul Clarke, which have reigned in the Capitol for over a century. Rose served as head of the American Bar Association and stood up against secession during the Civil War, but the attorney maintained his adherence to the Confederate state of Arkansas. Meanwhile, Clarke was the 18th governor of the state and later served as Senate representative but attracted opposition last year with claims he advocated white supremacy.

The East Front of the U.S. Capitol (www.aoc.gov)

The East Front of the U.S. Capitol (www.aoc.gov)

Cash, who died in 2003 at 71 years old, spent decades in the limelight as one of country music’s greatest icons with hits such as “I Walk the Line” and “Folsom Prison Blues.” Moreover, Bates is celebrated as a renowned activist and writer who guided nine children that went on to integrate Little Rock Central High School in 1957.

JOHN RICH SPEAKS OUT ON LIL NAS X’S ‘OLD TOWN ROAD’ AFTER BILLY RAY CYRUS HOPS ON REMIX: ‘LET THE FANS DECIDE’

“This is an extraordinary moment recognizing the contributions of two incredible Arkansans,” Hutchinson added. “We want our memories, through our statues, to tell the story of Arkansas. I believe our story is represented well by these two historic figures.”

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Each state is entitled to two statues of historical figures to be displayed in the Capitol Building.

Source: Fox News National

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Emissaries from round world gathering in Christchurch for remembrance

People visit a memorial site for victims of Friday's shooting, in front of the Masjid Al Noor mosque in Christchurch
FILE PHOTO - People visit a memorial site for victims of Friday's shooting, in front of the Masjid Al Noor mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand March 18, 2019. REUTERS/Jorge Silva

March 28, 2019

WELLINGTON (Reuters) – Representatives of governments from around the world are expected to attend a national remembrance service in New Zealand on Friday for the 50 victims of a mass shooting at two mosques in Christchurch.

“This is an event that affected New Zealand deeply. But it was our Muslim New Zealanders who were targeted. So rightly so, that would be reflected in the remembrance service,” Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern told a news conference.

The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) will be represented at the service, but the full list of the attendees from 59 countries was withheld for security reasons, as the country has been on high alert since the March 15 attack.

Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison, the governor general Peter Cosgrove and opposition leader Bill Shorten will be among foreign leaders attending the service, Ardern said.

Heads of state from Pacific countries, including Fiji’s President Jioji Konkrote will also be in attendance, she added.

The service will be held in Christchurch in Hagley Park, where tens of thousands of New Zealanders have gathered since the attack to mourn the deaths. It will be televised live on state television networks.

Britain’s Prince William will visit New Zealand next month to honour the victims, his office said.

The massacre in New Zealand was carried out by a lone gunman at two mosques. Australian Brenton Tarrant, 28, a suspected white supremacist, has been charged with one murder following the attack and is likely to face more charges when he is presented in court on April 5.

(Reporting by Praveen Menon; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)

Source: OANN

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Italy considering compensation claim against EU over bank rescue: Conte

Italian Prime Minister Guiseppe Conte arrives at a European Union leaders summit in Brussels
Italian Prime Minister Guiseppe Conte arrives at a European Union leaders summit in Brussels, Belgium March 22, 2019. Julien Warnand/Pool via REUTERS

March 22, 2019

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Italy is considering compensation claims against the European Commission for the strict interpretation it gave to EU banking rules, the Italian prime minister said on Friday, after a landmark EU ruling this week over a bank rescue.

On Tuesday the EU general court overturned Brussels’ decision to block a 2014 rescue plan of small Italian lender Tercas, prompting compensation calls from Italian banks which argued that subsequent banking rescues in Italy were more costly because of the Commission’s strict position.

“We have to draw political and juridical conclusions, including about a compensation plan,” Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte told reporters after a summit of EU leaders in Brussels.

Earlier this week Italian Foreign Minister Enzo Moavero Milanesi had also flagged the possibility of a legal action against Brussels.

Conte backed Moavero’s comments but called for a cautious approach as the EU Commission could also appeal the ruling, he told reporters.

Conte, whose eurosceptic government has used public funds to help Italy’s ailing Carige bank and has not ruled out further support, said the Tercas ruling “set a precedent” which could enable a less strict application of EU banking rules.

The European Commission has said it is assessing the judgment and its consequences on future interventions.

Seven banks have been rescued in Italy since the Tercas case, including Banca Monte dei Paschi, the world’s oldest lender still in operation, and a smaller bank in Tuscany whose collapse and the subsequent wipeout of its creditors triggered the suicide of one of them.

The Tercas rescue was orchestrated by Italy’s deposit guarantee fund, which Brussels said could not be used for measures other than its core function of paying back savers hit by a bank failure.

The EU court ruling, labeled “historic” by EU lawmakers, effectively dismissed the Commission’s argument.

(Reporting by Francesco Guarascio; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Source: OANN

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Huawei says its equipment as secure as any, pans U.S. campaign

FILE PHOTO: People walk past a sign board of Huawei at CES Asia 2016 in Shanghai
FILE PHOTO: People walk past a sign board of Huawei at CES (Consumer Electronics Show) Asia 2016 in Shanghai, China May 12, 2016. REUTERS/Aly Song/File Photo

April 11, 2019

By Foo Yun Chee

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – China’s Huawei Technologies said on Thursday the security of its telecoms network equipment was as tight as any, and hit back at the U.S. government for briefing Washington’s allies against it.

Huawei, the global market leader, is the target of a campaign by Washington, which has barred it from next-generation 5G networks due to concerns over its ties to the Chinese government and says Western countries should block its technology.

The issue is crucial because of 5G’s leading role in internet-connected products ranging from self-driving cars and smart cities to augmented reality and artificial intelligence.

“We are probably the most tested vendor in the world,” Huawei’s cybersecurity director Sophie Batas told journalists at its new cybersecurity center in Brussels.

She criticized comments by Robert Strayer, U.S. State Department deputy assistant secretary for cyber, international communications and information policy, who told journalists on Wednesday that countries adopting risk-based security frameworks for 5G would lead to Huawei being banned.

“I have difficulty believing that a government like the United States organized a press conference yesterday to single out one particular company, and I wonder why it is going so far,” she said.

The two countries are also embroiled in a long-running trade dispute.

Batas said there were a range of tests customers could do on Huawei products at the center and similar facilities in several countries, as well as hiring independent third party evaluators.

She said law firms Zhong Lun, Clifford Chance and Ernst & Young had looked into China’s intelligence laws and concluded that did not allow Beijing to install backdoor features in a company’s equipment.

Last month, Germany set tougher criteria for vendors supplying telecoms network equipment there, but stopped short of singling out Huawei, instead saying the same rules should apply to all vendors.

(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee; editing by John Stonestreet)

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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