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Democrats, Let's Not Eat Our Own

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The 2020 campaign will be one of the nastiest in living memory. President Trump and his campaign can be expected to slander directly or with coded messages whomever Democrats nominate to run against him. With Trump on the ropes, Democrats should be braced for an even more vicious barrage than the one Hillary Clinton faced.

And whomever emerges as our standard-bearer -- however left or center-left they may be – will need the whole of our richly diverse party standing behind them in order to withstand Trump’s maliciousness and successfully deliver their own message to voters.

It is important that the Democratic nominee prove tough enough in the primary to survive such attacks. However, it is also critically important that Democrats do not lay any groundwork for Trump’s attacks during the primary process. Every candidate must be cautious when going after other Democrats. The best way to maintain our own integrity and not help Trump is to keep intraparty criticism honest. We should not eat our own.

Keeping disagreements within the bounds that this unique moment demands, however, is an abstract idea, and abstract rules can be difficult to enforce. Running for president is an ambitious act, and primaries are adversarial situations that can quickly become more heated and charged than the participants ever intend. Therefore, Democrats should embrace the various peace pacts being proposed to keep the primary from drifting beyond an honest competition of visions that strengthens us all and becoming a conflict that obscures the overwhelming unity of purpose we have.

It is no secret that I have been critical of Bernie Sanders in the past.  But I also believe that when someone with whom we have disagreed takes an action that we believe is right, we should make it a point to thank them. Sen. Sanders took a welcome step in the direction of party unity with his recent call for surrogates and supporters to be respectful of his opponents in the primary.

Sanders, as well as all the other candidates running, have embraced a pledge not to use hacked materials. This is a good start. State party chairs from New Hampshire, Iowa, South Carolina and Nevada are making a proposal to the Association of State Democratic Committees to “develop a collaborative approach to battling disinformation, illicit campaign tactics, fake accounts, altered text, audio, and video, any and all inauthentic speech in our Presidential Primary process.” The ASDC should adopt this proposal at once.

In another commendable move, Sanders’ campaign has also pledged to not air a single ad that invokes a personal attack. He has left open the possibility of airing ads that display differences in policy – and that’s what this primary is for: a vigorous discourse on public policy, not personality warfare.

All our candidates are progressives who want to fight for the positive change that working families, those struggling to afford medical care, those suffering under the weight of reinvigorated bigotry, and the whole planet are counting on us to achieve. We must always remember that, just as we must always remember that Donald Trump is our shared opponent, regardless of the ultimate identity of the Democratic Party presidential nominee.

We must also guard against the use of unscrupulous attacks within the progressive movement.

A case in point: The Young Turks, a news organization that prominently supports Sanders’ candidacy, disseminated a false narrative about shadowy Democratic elites conspiring against the senator in their coverage of his recent CNN townhall. They did opposition research on Sanders’ questioners, impugning their motives by pointing to an internship one of them had done, and the composition of the board of directors of a nonprofit that another one of the questioners once worked for. This type of conspiracy-mongering hurt us in 2016 and will again in 2020.

Democrats should focus on honest policy disagreements that help us sharpen our messaging and demonstrate that we are open to people with different worldviews. Honest concerns about personal behavior help set the standard for how people should behave in this country. Honest exploration of ethical quandaries show leadership in these corrupt times. Substantive and fair debate strengthens our party and our country. Taking unfair cheap shots based on disinformation only divides our party and our country.

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Taiwan says will not accept any deal that destroys democracy

Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen visits the 6th Army Command, ahead of Lunar New Year, in Taoyuan
FILE PHOTO - Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen visits the 6th Army Command, ahead of Lunar New Year, in Taoyuan, Taiwan January 25, 2019. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu

February 20, 2019

TAIPEI (Reuters) – Taiwan will not accept any deal that destroys its sovereignty and democracy, President Tsai Ing-wen said on Wednesday after the island’s opposition KMT party said it could sign a peace deal with China if it wins a presidential election next year.

Tsai’s Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) party suffered stinging losses to the China-friendly Kuomintang (KMT) in mayoral and local elections in November.

Self-governed Taiwan is China’s most sensitive issue and is claimed by Beijing as its sacred territory.

(Reporting By Yimou Lee, Writing by Anne Marie Roantree; Editing by Darren Schuettler)

Source: OANN

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Mozambique starts three days of mourning after cyclone kills hundreds

Drone footage shows destruction after Cyclone Idai in the settlement of Praia Nova, which sits on the edge of Beira
Drone footage shows destruction after Cyclone Idai in the settlement of Praia Nova, which sits on the edge of Beira, Mozambique, March 18, 2019 in this still image taken from a social media video on March 19, 2019. International Federation Of Red Cross And Red Crescent Societies via REUTERS

March 20, 2019

MAPUTO/HARARE (Reuters) – Mozambique started three days of national mourning on Wednesday after powerful cyclone winds and flooding killed hundreds of people and left a massive trail of destruction across swathes of southeast Africa.

Cylone Idai, which hit Mozambique’s port city of Beira on Thursday before moving inland, brought winds of up to 170 kph (105 mph) which flattened buildings and put the lives of millions of people at risk.

Mozambique’s President Filipe Nyusi said in a televised statement on Tuesday that the cyclone had killed more than 200 people in Mozambique but that more bodies were still being discovered.

In neighboring Zimbabwe, the official death count stands at 98 but is likely to grow as hundreds are still missing.

Rescue crews are still struggling to reach victims, while aid groups say many survivors are trapped in remote areas, surrounded by wrecked roads and submerged villages.

“Challenges remain in terms of the search and rescue of thousands of people, including children,” UNICEF said. It estimated that 260,000 children were at risk in Mozambique. The Red Cross has said at least 400,000 people have been made homeless in central Mozambique alone.

Beira, a low-lying coastal city of 500,000 people, is home to Mozambique’s second-largest port and serves as a gateway to landlocked countries in the region.

Local media reported that there were food and fuel shortages in central Mozambique because Beira was cut off by road.

In eastern Zimbabwe grieving families are rushing to bury their dead because the cyclone has knocked out power supplies and stopped mortuaries from functioning. Zimbabwe’s Grain Millers Association said 100 trucks carrying wheat destined for Zimbabwe were stuck in Beira.

The European Union announced on Tuesday an initial emergency aid package of 3.5 million euros ($3.97 million) to Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe for emergency shelters, hygiene, sanitation and health care. Britain has also pledged aid.

(Reporting by Manuel Mucari and MacDonald Dzirutwe; Additional reporting by Catarina Demony; Writing by Alexander Winning; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

Source: OANN

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Mall of America suspect faces attempted homicide charge in boy’s near-fatal fall

A man has been charged with attempted homicide in Friday’s unprovoked attack at the Mall of America in Minneapolis that left a 5-year-old boy with life-threatening injuries.

Emmanuel Deshawn Aranda, 24, has a history of mental health problems and had twice been banned from the mall, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported Saturday.

The boy fell three floors after being pushed or thrown over a railing, according to Bloomington cops. The child and Aranda were strangers, they said.

Brian Johnson told a local news outlet he heard the boy’s mother scream, "Everybody pray, everybody pray. Oh my God, my baby, someone threw him over the edge."

EX-NFL PLAYER, GIRLFRIEND ARRESTED IN DEATH OF ABUSED LAS VEGAS GIRL, 5, POLICE SAY

The boy was initially reported as not breathing, but is being treated at a hospital but there was no immediate word on his condition.

Aranda was arrested in the mall transit station after trying to flee, the paper reported.

MAN ARRESTED AFTER 5-YEAR-OLD BOY THROWN FROM THIRD FLOOR AT MALL OF AMERICA

Aranda was banned from the mall for a year after he was seen throwing items from the third floor to the first floor in July 2015, Fox 9 Minneapolis reported.

He violated the ban in October 2015 when he was arrested for throwing a drinking a glass at woman at a restaurant, the station reported. He was banned again from the mall until December 2017.

Aranda was panhandling at the time, according to the Star-Tribune. He was ordered to get a mental health evaluation as part of his sentence in that case.

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The Mall of America issued a statement Friday: “This was a senseless act and words cannot truly express our profound shock and sadness.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source: Fox News National

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Kamala Harris calls for AG Barr to testify on Mueller probe, as 2020 Dems seize on report drop

The Democratic presidential contenders are uniformly calling for Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian tampering in the 2016 presidential election to be released publicly – while at least one high-profile candidate wants Attorney General Bill Barr to testify on the findings.

Minutes after the news broke Friday afternoon that the long-awaited report had been submitted to Barr, the White House hopefuls quickly fired off statements calling for the Trump administration to ensure the documents go public.

TRUMP TEAM CONFIDENT AFTER MUELLER REPORT DROP

“Attorney General Barr—release the Mueller report to the American public. Now,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Massachusetts tweeted.

“As Donald Trump said, ‘Let it come out.’ I call on the Trump administration to make Special Counsel Mueller's full report public as soon as possible. No one, including the president, is above the law,” Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont wrote on Twitter.

Sen. Kamala Harris of California called for “total transparency” – then upped the ante by calling on Barr to testify.

“The Department of Justice launched the Special Counsel investigation to get to the bottom of foreign interference in the 2016 election and any other illegal actions. A declassified report must be made public immediately and Attorney General Barr must publicly testify under oath about the investigation and its findings, and provide all underlying materials to the appropriate Congressional committees,” the former California attorney general said in a statement.

Both Harris, Warren and Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey have all started petitions to pressure the administration to release the report – though the White House has deferred to Barr on next steps. Booker also is using the report drop to raise money for his campaign.

“This report should be made public immediately,” he tweeted.

MUELLER NOT RECOMMENDING MORE INDICTMENTS: SOURCE

It was a similar sentiment on Twitter from former Rep. Beto O’Rourke of Texas.

“Release the Mueller report to the American people,” he wrote.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York said, “report should be made public without any delay. The American people have a right to know its findings.”

And Sen. Amy Klobuchar tweeted “BREAKING: The Mueller report is complete. Attorney General Barr must release the full report to the public. The American people deserve to know the facts.”

Mueller was appointed nearly two years ago to investigate the election tampering and any possible collusion between Moscow and Trump’s 2016 campaign to swing the presidential election in the then-GOP nominee’s favor. Barr and his team are now reviewing the report and creating a summary document that will be sent to Congress, and possibly released.

Former San Antonio, Texas mayor and former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro tweeted that the “American people deserve to know the full truth about Russia’s interference in our democracy. The Special Counsel report must be publicly released in its entirety.”

Former three-term Rep. John Delaney wrote the “patriotic action for the Attorney General is to release the entire Mueller Report to the American people. We paid for it and this moment requires transparency.”

Source: Fox News Politics

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Judge refuses bond for man accused of IS-inspired attack

The defense attorney for a Maryland man accused of planning an Islamic State-inspired attack at a shopping and entertainment complex near Washington, D.C., has asked a judge to be skeptical of authorities' claims.

Michael CitaraManis said Tuesday that the government "is trying to fit certain facts into their narrative" that 28-year-old Rondell Henry intended to carry out a terrorist attack last month.

But U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas DiGirolamo refused to free Henry on bond after deciding the defendant poses a danger to the public if he's released before trial.

Police arrested Henry on March 28 on a charge of driving a stolen vehicle across state lines. The charge carries up to 10 years in prison. Prosecutors are expected to seek additional charges.

Source: Fox News National

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Saudi Crown Prince meets commander of U.S. Central Command -report

FILE PHOTO: Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman speaks during a meeting with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Hyderabad House in New Delhi
FILE PHOTO: Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman speaks during a meeting with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Hyderabad House in New Delhi, India, February 20, 2019. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi/File Photo

April 15, 2019

CAIRO (Reuters) – Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman met U.S. Central Command commander General Kenneth McKenzie in the capital Riyadh to discuss cooperation between the two countries, especially in the military arena, Saudi Press Agency said late on Monday.

They reviewed bilateral relations between the two countries and latest developments in the region, SPA said.

(Reporting by Ali Abdelaty; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)

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].”

CLICK HERE FOR THE FOX NEWS APP

Mohamed Zahran, the suspected leader of the attacks which targeted six hotels and churches, killed himself in a suicide bombing at the Shangri-La hotel. Police also said they had arrested the second-in-command of the group, called National Towheed Jamaat. Catholic churches in Sri Lanka canceled all Sunday Masses until further notice over concerns that they remain a top target of Islamic State-linked extremists.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source: Fox News World

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FILE PHOTO: Sri Lankan Special Task Force soldiers stand guard in front of a mosque as a Muslim man walks past him during the Friday prayers at a mosque, days after a string of suicide bomb attacks on Easter Sunday, in Colombo
FILE PHOTO: Sri Lankan Special Task Force soldiers stand guard in front of a mosque as a Muslim man walks past him during the Friday prayers at a mosque, five days after a string of suicide bomb attacks on Catholic churches and luxury hotels across the island on Easter Sunday, in Colombo, Sri Lanka April 26, 2019. REUTERS/Dinuka Liyanawatte/File Photo

April 26, 2019

By Tom Lasseter and Shri Navaratnam

KATTANKUDY, Sri Lanka (Reuters) – Mohamed Hashim Mohamed Zahran was 12 years old when he began his studies at the Jamiathul Falah Arabic College. He was a nobody, with no claim to scholarship other than ambition.

Zahran and his four brothers and sisters squeezed into a two-room house with their parents in a small seaside town in eastern Sri Lanka; their father was a poor man who sold packets of food on the street and had a reputation for being a petty thief.

“His father didn’t do much,” recalled the school’s vice principal, S.M. Aliyar, laughing out loud.

The boy surprised the school with his sharp mind. For three years, Zahran practiced memorizing the Koran. Next came his studies in Islamic law. But the more he learned, the more Zahran argued that his teachers were too liberal in their reading of the holy book.

“He was against our teaching and the way we interpreted the Koran – he wanted his radical Islam,” said Aliyar. “So we kicked him out.”

Aliyar, now 73 with a long white beard, remembers the day Zahran left in 2005. “His father came and asked, ‘Where can he go?’.”

The school would hear again of Mohamed Zahran. And the world now knows his name. The Sri Lankan government has identified him as the ringleader of a group that carried out a series of Easter Sunday suicide bombings in the country on April 21.

The blasts killed more than 250 people in churches and luxury hotels, one of the deadliest-ever such attacks in South Asia. There were nine suicide bombers who blew apart men, women and children as they sat to pray or ate breakfast.

Most of the attackers were well-educated and from wealthy families, with some having been abroad to study, according to Sri Lankan officials.

That description does not, however, fit their alleged leader, a man said to be in his early 30s, who authorities say died in the slaughter. Zahran was different.

INTELLIGENCE FAILINGS

Sri Lanka’s national leadership has come under heavy criticism for failing to heed warnings from Indian intelligence services – at least three in April alone – that an attack was pending. But Zahran’s path from provincial troublemaker to alleged jihadist mastermind was marked by years of missed or ignored signals that the man with a thick beard and paunch was dangerous.

His increasingly militant brand of Islam was allowed to grow inside a marginalized minority community – barely 10 percent of the country’s roughly 20 million people are Muslim – against a backdrop of a dysfunctional developing nation.

The top official at the nation’s defense ministry resigned on Thursday, saying that some institutions under his charge had failed.

For much of his adult life, Zahran, 33, courted controversy inside the Muslim community itself.

In the internet age, that problem did not stay local. Zahran released online videos calling for jihad and threatening bloodshed.

After the blasts, Islamic State claimed credit and posted a video of Zahran, clutching an assault rifle, standing before the group’s black flag and pledging allegiance to its leader.

The precise relationship between Zahran and Islamic State is not yet known. An official with India’s security services, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that during a raid on a suspected Islamic State cell by the National Investigation Agency earlier this year officers found copies of Zahran’s videos. The operation was in the state of Tamil Nadu, just across a thin strait of ocean from Sri Lanka.

“LIKE A SPOILED CHILD”

Back in 2005, Zahran was looking to make his way in the world. His hometown of Kattankudy is some seven hours’ drive from Colombo on the other side of the island nation, past the countless palm trees, roadside Buddha statues, cashew hawkers and an occasional lumbering elephant in the bush. It is a town of about 40,000 people, a dot on the eastern coast with no clear future for an impoverished young man who’d just been expelled.

Zahran joined a mosque in 2006, the Dharul Athar, and gained a place on its management committee. But within three years they’d had a falling out.

“He wanted to speak more independently, without taking advice from elders,” said the mosque’s imam, or spiritual leader, M.T.M. Fawaz.

Also, the young man was more conservative, Fawaz said, objecting, for instance, to women wearing bangles or earrings.

“The rest of us come together as community leaders but Zahran wanted to speak for himself,” said Fawaz, a man with broad shoulders lounging with a group of friends in a back office of the mosque after evening prayers. “He was a black sheep who broke free.”

Mohamed Yusuf Mohamed Thaufeek, a friend who met Zahran at school and later became an adherent of his, said the problems revolved around Zahran’s habit of misquoting Islamic scriptures.

The mosque’s committee banned him from preaching for three months in 2009. Zahran stormed off.

“We treated him like a spoiled child, a very narrow-minded person who was always causing some trouble,” said the head of the committee, Mohamed Ismail Mohamed Naushad, a timber supplier who shook his head at the memory.

Now on his own, Zahran began to collect a group of followers who met in what Fawaz described as “a hut”.

At about that time, Zahran, then 23, married a young girl from a small town outside the capital of Colombo and brought his bride back to Kattankudy, according to his sister, Mathaniya.

“I didn’t have much of a connection with her – she was 14,” she said.

Despite being “a bit rough-edged”, Zahran was a skilled speaker and others his age were drawn to his speeches and Koranic lessons, said Thaufeek. He traveled the countryside at times, giving his version of religious instruction as he went.

Also, Zahran had found a popular target: the town’s Sufi population, who practice a form of Islam often described a mystical, but which to conservatives is heresy.

Tensions in the area went back some years. In 2004, there was a grenade attack on a Sufi mosque and in 2006 several homes of Sufis were set afire. Announcements boomed from surrounding mosques at the time calling for a Sufi spiritual leader to be killed, said Sahlan Khalil Rahman, secretary of a trust that oversees a group of Sufi mosques.

He blamed followers of the fundamentalist Wahhabi strain of Islam that some locals say became more popular after funding from Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Wahhabism, flowed to mosques in Kattankudy.

It was, Rahman said, an effort “to convert Sufis into Wahhabis through this terrorism”. Rahman handed over a photograph album showing charred homes, bullet holes sprayed across an office wall and a shrine’s casket upended.

ONLINE RADICAL

It was an ideal backdrop for Zahran’s bellicose delivery and apparent sense of religious destiny.

He began holding rallies, bellowing insults through loudspeakers that reverberated inside the Sufis’ house of worship as they tried to pray.

In 2012, Zahran started a mosque of his own. The Sufis were alarmed and, Rahman said, passed on complaints to both local law enforcement and eventually national government offices. No action was taken.

The then-officer in charge of Kattankudy police, Ariyabandhu Wedagedara, said in a telephone interview that he couldn’t arrest people simply because of theological differences.

     “The problem at the time was between followers of different Islamic sects – Zahran was not a major troublemaker, but he and followers of other sects, including the Sufis, were at loggerheads,” Wedagedara said.

Zahran found another megaphone: the internet. His Facebook page was taken down after the bombings, but Muslims in the area said his video clips had previously achieved notoriety.

His speeches went from denouncing Sufis to “kafirs”, or non-believers, in general. Zahran’s sister, Mathaniya, said in an interview that she thought “his ideas became more radical from listening to Islamic State views on the Internet”.

In one undated video, Zahran, in a white tunic and standing in front of an image of flames, boomed in a loud voice: “You will not have time to pick up the remains of blown-up bodies. We’ll keep sending those insulting Allah to hell.”

“HARD TO TAKE”

Zahran spoke in Tamil, making his words available to young Muslims clicking on their cellphones in Kattankudy and other towns like it during a period when, in both 2014 and 2018, reports and images spread of Sinhalese Buddhists rioting against Muslims in Sri Lanka.

In 2017, Zahran’s confrontations boiled over. At a rally near a Sufi community, his followers came wielding swords. At least one man was hacked and hospitalized. The police arrested several people connected to Zahran, including his father and one of his brothers. Zahran slipped away from public view.

That December, the mosque Zahran founded released a public notice disowning him. Thaufeek, his friend from school, is now the head. He counted the places that Zahran had been driven away from – his school, the Dharul Athar mosque and then, “we ourselves kicked him out, which would have been hard for him to take”.

The next year, a group of Buddha statues was vandalized in the town of Mawanella, about five hours drive from Kattankudy. There, in the lush mountains of Sri Lanka’s interior, Zahran had taken up temporary residence.

“He was preaching to kill people,” said A.G.M. Anees, who has served as an imam at a small mosque in the area for a decade. “This is not Islam, this is violence.”

Zahran went into hiding once more.

On the Thursday morning before the Easter Sunday bombings, Zahran’s sister-in-law knocked on the door of a neighbor who did seamstress work near Kattankudy. She handed over a parcel of fabric and asked for it to be sewn into a tunic by the end of the day.

“She said she was going on a family trip,” said the neighbor, M.H. Sithi Nazlya.

Zahran’s sister says that her parents turned off their cellphones on the Friday. On Sunday, when she visited their home, they were gone.

She does not know if Zahran arranged for them to be taken somewhere safe. Or why he would have carried out the bombing.

But now in Kattankudy, and in many other places, people are talking about Mohamed Hashim Mohamed Zahran.

(Reporting by Tom Lasseter and Shri Navaratnam; Additional reporting by Sanjeev Miglani, Shihar Aneez and Alasdair Pal; Editing by John Chalmers and Alex Richardson)

Source: OANN

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