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Ecuador withdraws asylum from Julian Assange, arrested by UK police

Ecuador announced Thursday that it has withdrawn asylum from WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for “repeatedly violating international conventions and protocol.”

Assange was subsequently arrested by British police.

This is a breaking news story. Check back for updates.

Source: Fox News World

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Man claiming appointment with Trump strikes Secret Service officer outside White House, authorities say

A man claiming he had an appointment with President Trump and wanted to "bring peace to the world," was arrested this week after allegedly striking a Secret Service officer outside the White House, according to court documents.

Authorities say Christopher Henry Alexander Davis, 29, of Herndon, Va., was arrested around 7:40 p.m. Monday after allegedly breaching a security perimeter and engaging in a physical struggle with officers when they attempted to handcuff him, a report said.

Davis "struck (the officer) with his right forearm to the left side of the (officer's) face and nose," according to a court filing from a Secret Service officer, Washington's WRC-TV reported.

TOM ARNOLD CONFIRMS SECRET SERVICE VISITED HIM OVER DONALD TRUMP THREAT AFTER VIDEO LEAKS

The suspect was charged with assault, resisting arrest and attempting to enter a restricted building or grounds, the Washington Post reported.

After Davis was in custody, he repeatedly told officers he had an appointment to see the president to discuss the border wall and the "Green New Deal," the paper reported, citing an affidavit.

“Davis states he wished no harm on the President but stated that, ‘I want to help bring peace to the world,’ ” the affidavit said.

The court document also quotes Davis as saying that he suffers from bipolar disorder and that he was so focused on meeting with Trump that he did not hear the officers’ demands, according to the Post.

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The suspect was treated at a hospital for injuries to his head and abrasions to his hands.

The Secret Service officer suffered multiple injuries to her face and a contusion on her left knee, the report said.

Both the Secret Service and Davis’ defense attorney did not immediately return requests for comment, according to WRC-TV. Davis is scheduled to appear in U.S. District Court in Washington on Friday, the report said.

Source: Fox News National

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Britain can’t ‘simply arrest’ way from youth knife violence

British Prime Minister Theresa May is calling for a more coordinated response to youth violence following a recent spike in knife-related killings.

May said at a government summit that started on Monday that Britain can't "simply arrest ourselves out of this problem" but needs to take a more wide-ranging approach.

She says an "appalling" number of young lives have been cut short by senseless violence.

The government is bringing together more than 100 experts from various fields to come up with an effective strategy after teenagers died of knife injuries in London and other major cities.

Source: Fox News World

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Vermont woman, 84, heading to Poland to compete in pole-vaulting championship

Most would agree that it's important to stay active in the later years of life, but 84-year-old Florence "Flo" Fillion Meiler is taking that to a new level.

The Vermont native is heading to Poland next Thursday for the World Masters Athletics Championship Indoor where she will compete in events including the long jump, 60-meter hurdles, 800-meter run, pentathlon and her specialty, the pole vault.

Her favorite events are the hurdles and the pole vault - the sport which sees competitors launch themselves over a high bar with a fiberglass pole.

"You really have to work at that," she said. "You have to have the upper core and you have to have timing, and I just love it because it's challenging."

In that particualr category, she will literally have no competition - because she's the only woman in her age group of 80-84 year olds. Despite her easy win, she's not slowing down her exercise.

"You know, I do train five days a week," she said. "And when I found out I was going to compete at the Worlds, I've been training six days a week because I knew I would really get my body in shape."

Meiler grew up on a dairy farm, working hard manual jobs like feeding cattle and raking hay. She was always active in sports throughout school, playing basketball and taking tap and ballroom dancing classes. Professionally, she went on to work as a sales representative for Herbalife nutritional supplements for 30 years.

WWII VET TURNING 100 WANTS BIRTHDAY CARDS FROM 'AROUND THE WORLD'

When she met her husband, Eugene, a military pilot turned financial analyst, the two competed together in water skiing. It wasn't until she was 65 that she picked up pole-vaulting at the encouragement of a friend with whom she played competitive doubles tennis.

Staying active has helped Meiler and her husband persevere through hard times, she said, as they adopted three children after losing two of their babies prematurely, and one at the age of three. Two years ago, her adopted son died at the age of 51.

TEXAS HOUSE PASSES BILL LEGALIZING LEMONADE STANDS RUN BY KIDS; NEXT STOP IS SENATE

Sadly, Meiler also says she misses her training partner - a good friend who began having health problems about five years ago and can no longer train. She's now hoping to find a new partner to hit the gym with, since it can be harder to train alone.

Her coach, however, testified to her strength and committment to her sport.

"She's incredibly serious about what she does," coach Emmaline Berg said. "She comes in early to make sure she's warmed up enough. She goes home and stretches a lot. So she pretty much structures her entire life around being a fantastic athlete, which is remarkable at any age, let alone hers."

"She was like a local celebrity," she continued.

Meiler already set a record at the age of 80 after clearing a 6-foot pole vault at the USA Track and Field Adirondack Championships in Albany, New York.

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"I was screaming, I was so happy," she said.

As she embarks to Poland next week, she hopes to set more records and continue being a role model for other seniors.

The Associated Press contributed to the reporting of this article.

Source: Fox News National

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The Latest: Suspect tracked through cellphone, video footage

The Latest on fires at black churches in Louisiana. (all times local):

12:55 p.m.

Court documents say investigators used video footage, cellphone tracking and a Walmart receipt to help identify the man they believed set fire to three black churches in Louisiana.

Holden Matthews, a 21-year-old white man, was arrested Wednesday in St. Landry Parish.

The affidavit filed with Matthews' arrest warrant says a gas can recovered at one of the burned churches was sold at Walmart locations and the company's investigators found that the same type of gas can, along with a lighter, were bought March 25 in Opelousas. Documents say the debit card used to buy the items belonged to Matthews.

The affidavit says "the purchase time on this receipt is less than three hours before the first church fire was reported."

The document also says GPS tracking through cellphone tower data shows Matthews was in the area of all three church fires.

The documents say Matthews has been denied bond.

___

10:30 a.m.

St. Landry Parish Sheriff Bobby Guidroz says the father of the suspect arrested in the fires at three black Louisiana churches is a deputy in his department.

Holden Matthews is a 21-year-old white man who's been arrested in the fires and faces three counts of simple arson of a religious building.

At a news conference, Sheriff Guidroz disputed reports that Matthews' father turned his son in. Guidroz also said the suspect's father knew nothing of his son's involvement in the fires.

The first fire torched the St. Mary Baptist Church in Port Barre last month. Days later, the Greater Union Baptist Church and Mount Pleasant Baptist Church in Opelousas were burned. Each was more than 100 years old, with mostly black congregations.

The churches were empty at the time of the fires, and no one was injured.

___

10:15 a.m.

Authorities say they're investigating hate as a motive in the fires at three black churches in southern Louisiana.

The suspect has been identified as Holden Matthews, a 21-year-old white man.

At a Thursday news conference, State Fire Marshal Butch Browning said the threat to the community "is gone now." He also called the fires "an attack on our God and our religion."

The first fire torched the St. Mary Baptist Church in Port Barre last month. Days later, the Greater Union Baptist Church and Mount Pleasant Baptist Church in Opelousas were burned. Each was more than 100 years old, with mostly black congregations.

The churches were empty at the time of the fires, and no one was injured.

___

10:05 a.m.

The suspect arrested in a string of fires at historically black churches in southern Louisiana has been identified as a 21-year-old white man.

According to a news release, Holden Matthews faces three counts of simple arson of a religious building.

At a news conference, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards said "these were evil acts."

The first fire torched the St. Mary Baptist Church in Port Barre last month. Days later, the Greater Union Baptist Church and Mount Pleasant Baptist Church in Opelousas were burned. Each was more than 100 years old, with mostly black congregations.

The churches were empty at the time of the fires, and no one was injured.

___

5:25 a.m.

U.S. Attorney David C. Joseph says authorities have arrested a person in connection with suspicious fires at three historic black churches in Louisiana.

Joseph announced late Wednesday that the suspect is in state custody, and said federal agents stand shoulder to shoulder with the victims of "these despicable acts." A Thursday press conference at the St. Landry Parish Sheriff's Office is planned.

The first fire torched the St. Mary Baptist Church in Port Barre last month. Days later, the Greater Union Baptist Church and Mount Pleasant Baptist Church in Opelousas were burned. Each was more than 100 years old, with mostly black congregations.

The churches were empty at the time of the fires, and no one was injured. Fire Marshal H. "Butch" Browning said all three were suspicious.

___

An earlier version of this report had the incorrect name for suspect Holden Matthews.

Source: Fox News National

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Report: Pentagon Names Space Development Agency Director

The Pentagon has formally launched an independent Space Development Agency, naming its new director, Defense News reported Wednesday.

Citing a memo signed Tuesday by Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan, the news outlet said the Department of Defense stood up the SDA as a new office that will be directed by retired Air Force Col. Fred Kennedy, who has also served as a senior policy adviser for national security space and aviation during the Obama administration.

"The SDA will define and monitor the Department's future threat-driven space architecture and will accelerate the development and fielding of new military space capabilities necessary to ensure out technological and military advantage in space for national defense," Shanahan wrote, Defense News reported.

And though the SDA is independent for now, the plan is to eventually transfer it inside a stand-alone Space Force, Defense News reported.

"Coordination of requirements and transition decisions will occur through the normal processes once SDA transfers to the U.S. Space Force," Shanahan wrote in the memo.

The news outlet noted outgoing Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson was an early skeptic of a Space Force — and last month told an Air Force symposium she still has "some concerns."

Source: NewsMax America

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Egypt discovers ancient port used by temple builders

Egypt says archaeologists have found a 3,000-year-old port where stones were transported to be used in the building of temples and obelisks.

The Antiquities Ministry said Tuesday the port was located near the Gebel el-Silsila archaeological site in upper Egypt, near the southern city of Aswan. It says the port dates back to the 18th dynasty, which ruled from 1543 to 1292 B.C.

Abdel Moneim Said, the director of the Aswan and Nubia antiquities area, says rocks quarried at Gebel el-Silsila were used in the construction of the ancient Egyptian temples at Karnak and Kom Ombo.

Egypt has touted a series of archaeological finds recently, hoping such discoveries will spur tourism, which suffered a major setback during the unrest that followed the 2011 uprising.

Source: Fox News World

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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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