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Denny Hamlin wins Daytona 500 after string of dramatic wrecks

Denny Hamlin came out on top in the 61st running of the Daytona 500 Sunday -- not long after a string of dramatic wrecks took out much of the competition in “The Great American Race.”

Paul Menard triggered the biggest multi-car wreck shortly after a restart with 10 laps to go.

Another crash soon afterwards involved William Byron, Chase Elliott and Brad Keselowski, among others.

Menard turned Matt DiBenedetto, who slammed into the wall and started a chain-reaction crash that collected nearly 20 cars. It brought out a red flag that stopped the race during the cleanup. There were no reports of anybody hurt.

Menard took responsibility for “The Big One” — NASCAR slang describing any crash usually involving five or more cars: “I’ll take the blame for that one.”

He also said: “It was go time, and I was pushing the 95 [Matt DiBenedetto] and it looked like he was trying to get to the middle and I started trying to get to the outside and just barely hooked him. Yeah, that was my bad. I wrecked a lot of cars. I feel bad about that.”

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Defending Daytona 500 champion Austin Dillon, Chase Elliott, Ryan Blaney, Aric Almirola and Daniel Suarez were among those involved in the mess.

Almirola seemingly had the wildest ride, his back wheels getting lifted off the pavement and landing on David Ragan’s windshield.

This is a developing story; check back for updates. Fox News' Samuel Chamberlain and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Italy to defend strategic interests in China ‘Belt and Road’ accord: paper

FILE PHOTO: Italy's Prime Minister Conte addresses the European Parliament during a debate on the future of Europe in Strasbourg
FILE PHOTO: Italy's Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte addresses the European Parliament during a debate on the future of Europe in Strasbourg, France, February 12, 2019. REUTERS/Vincent Kessler//File Photo

March 13, 2019

MILAN (Reuters) – Italy will protect its strategic infrastructure such as telecoms and avoid transferring key know-how as part of a planned agreement with China, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said in an interview published on Wednesday.

Italy is studying mechanisms to monitor commercial accords signed under the “Belt and Road” memorandum agreement with China, as well as other measures to protect “strategic activities and national interests,” Conte told the Corriere della Sera newspaper.

In separate comments to Corriere, a spokesman for the White House’s group of national security advisers, Garrett Marquis, warned the accord was “a political hazard.”

“In some well documented instances China has been able to obtain as collateral guarantees strategic assets of countries that were not able to repay their debts,” Marquis was quoted as saying.

China has denied its Belt and Road projects, which fund and build global transport and trade links in more than 60 countries, are a debt trap.

Italy’s public debt runs at more than 1.3 times its domestic output and is the world’s third-largest in absolute terms.

Corriere reported that the White House had warned Italy it would no longer be able to share sensitive information, such as intelligence reports, if the Rome government were to buy equipment from China’s Huawei.

The United States has urged allies not to use products made by Huawei, the world’s biggest maker of telecoms equipment, saying they could enable Chinese state espionage.

No evidence has been produced publicly and Huawei has repeatedly denied the allegations. But several Western countries have restricted, or are considering restricting, the company’s access to their markets, fuelling speculation of U.S. pressure.

The newspaper also said the United States would stop sending sensitive goods to the Italian ports of Genoa and Trieste if China was allowed to build infrastructure there.

Ports are one of the infrastructure cooperation areas included in the Belt and Road memorandum with Italy.

(Reporting by Valentina Za, editing by Silvia Aloisi and Darren Schuettler)

Source: OANN

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Steve Bannon: Trump will 'go full animal' against enemies with Mueller probe over

Following the submission of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election and the subsequent summary showing that President Trump and his campaign did not collude with Russia, former White House adviser Steve Bannon said the president will “go full animal” against his political enemies.

In an interview with Yahoo! News over the weekend, Bannon predicted that the president will "come off the chains" and will use the Mueller report findings against opponents especially if they demand additional documents.

"He will use it to bludgeon them," Bannon said.

Former White House strategist Steve Bannon in a photo from last week. Bannon said President Trump would use the Mueller report against his enemies. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

Former White House strategist Steve Bannon in a photo from last week. Bannon said President Trump would use the Mueller report against his enemies. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

"When I saw no new indictments — I thought, Oh my God! They didn’t indict anybody regarding the Flynn investigation, they didn’t indict Don, Jr.! Maybe [Mueller] could have details about obstruction of justice that are not indictable, but are meaningful," Bannon, who was fired from his White House role in August 2017, told the outlet. "But right now, it looks like they have nothing."

BANNON SAYS 'SIX TO A DOZEN' ADMINISTRATION OFFICIALS LIKELY BEHIND ANONYMOUS OP-ED

In the interview, Bannon said he repeatedly had told the president not to discredit Mueller, opining that the ultimate determination would vindicate Trump.

"I kept telling him, 'Don't say Mueller's bad, I don't think he's going to have anything.'"

Bannon also said Democrats were "left in tears" following the report's conclusion.

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“On 'Rachel Maddow,' she went 10 minutes into her show before the words ‘no indictment’ crossed her lips. On CNN, they're in the mumble tank," he said. "They're crestfallen. They thought this would be it."

Bannon is currently on an overseas tour geared toward supporting and unifying populist parties throughout Europe.

Source: Fox News Politics

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Brexit turmoil hits UK firms’ hiring plans: REC

FILE PHOTO: Builders work on a construction site in London
FILE PHOTO: Builders work on a construction site in London, Britain August 17, 2016. REUTERS/Neil Hall

March 27, 2019

LONDON (Reuters) – British companies have scaled back sharply their hiring and investment plans amid the growing turmoil around Britain’s exit from the European Union, a survey showed on Wednesday.

More firms were downbeat about the outlook for jobs and investment than were optimistic for the first time since the Recruitment and Employment Confederation began its surveys in June 2016, the month of the Brexit referendum.

Nearly three years on, it remains unclear how, when or even if Brexit will happen.

The REC report added to other surveys showing companies feeling the strain of Brexit uncertainty, even though employment growth has been strong.

Wednesday’s survey raised questions about the strength of the labor market.

“For months, businesses have told us that they were concerned about the general outlook for the economy. It is clear to us that this concern is now closer to home,” REC Chief Executive Neil Carberry said.

While more employers planned to increase rather than cut permanent staff, hiring intentions weakened sharply. For temporary staff, the survey showed outright cuts were likely.

“Lower use of temporary labor is a sign of lower demand,” Carberry said.

The REC survey of 600 employers took place between Dec. 11 and Feb. 21.

(Reporting by Andy Bruce; Editing by William Schomberg)

Source: OANN

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Hungary could resume anti-EU campaigns, says PM Orban

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban speaks at a migration summit in Budapest
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban speaks at a migration summit in Budapest, Hungary March 23, 2019. REUTERS/Bernadett Szabo

March 24, 2019

BUDAPEST (Reuters) – Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government could resume media campaigns against European Union bodies, he suggested on Sunday, as his nationalist Fidesz party gears up for European Parliament elections due on May 26.

On Wednesday the European Parliament’s main center-right grouping, the European People’s Party (EPP), voted to suspend Fidesz amid concerns it has violated EU principles on the rule of law.

The action was triggered in part by Orban’s media campaign attacking European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, depicting him as a proponent of mass immigration into Europe and as a puppet of Hungarian-born U.S. billionaire George Soros.

The European Commission has dismissed the claims as fiction.

Orban had ended the media attacks and apologized to members of the EPP, but he again struck a combative tone in an interview with public radio on Sunday.

“People are a bit angry with us in Brussels because, at the start of the European Parliament election campaign, we ran an information campaign in Hungary, essentially exposing what Brussels was up to,” Orban said.

“We have exposed them and, naturally, they are angry.”

Nationalist Orban has often clashed with the EU over his anti-immigration campaigns and judicial reforms.

“Our job now is to continuously inform the people about what Brussels is up to,” Orban added in Sunday’s interview.

“We should not back down, we should not be scared because the opponent takes offence and attacks us with the anger of people who are exposed.”

Asked whether Orban’s remarks meant Budapest would resume its anti-EU media campaigns, a government spokesman declined further comment, saying: “The prime minister’s words speak for themselves.”

Orban has also leveled criticism at European Commission First Vice-President Frans Timmermans, the European Socialist candidate to suceed Juncker after the May elections.

Orban cast Timmermans as an out-of-touch Brussels bureaucrat living in what Orban called a “bubble”. Dutchman Timmermans is broadly disliked by nationalist parties in Eastern Europe, including in Hungary.

“Just this week there was a vote transforming the Dutch upper house, where the party of this Timmermans fell over spectacularly. He has lost the confidence of the people. And meanwhile he comes to Budapest and tours European capitals to lecture us about democracy,” Orban said.

“Such Timmermans-types, who are given the boot at home by their own people, should not be given a position in Brussels, because that will weaken cooperation in the entire EU.”

Orban also said that the outcome of the European vote would determine whether Fidesz remains in the EPP group or seeks a new alliance in Europe.

(Reporting by Gergely Szakacs; Editing by David Goodman)

Source: OANN

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Trump wants GM CEO ‘to do something quickly’ to reopen Ohio plant

General Motors Chairman and CEO Mary Barra attends the reveal of the 2020 Cadillac XT6 SUV on the eve of press days of the North American International Auto show in Detroit
General Motors Chairman and CEO Mary Barra attends the reveal of the 2020 Cadillac XT6 SUV on the eve of press days of the North American International Auto show in Detroit, Michigan, U.S., January 13, 2019. REUTERS/Rebecca Cook

March 18, 2019

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump tweeted on Sunday that he urged General Motors Co’s chief executive to “do something quickly” to reopen the company’s Lordstown, Ohio, plant that was idled more than a week ago.

“I am not happy that it is closed when everything else in our Country is BOOMING,” Trump said.

Referring to his conversation with CEO Mary Barra, Trump added: “I asked her to sell it or do something quickly. She blamed the UAW union — I don’t care, I just want it open!” he tweeted.

Trump also tweeted on Saturday to urge GM to reopen the plant, saying: “Toyota is investing 13.5 $Billion in U.S., others likewise. G.M. MUST ACT QUICKLY. Time is of the essence!”

Earlier on Sunday, the United Auto Workers, which has filed suit challenging GM’s decision to end Cruze production at Lordstown, thanked the president “for fighting alongside the UAW against @GM. We will leave no stone unturned to keep the plants open!”

GM said in a statement that it and the UAW would decide what happens to the plant.

“We remain open to talking with all affected stakeholders, but our main focus remains on our employees and offering them jobs in our plants where we have growth opportunities,” it said. “We have opportunities available for virtually all impacted employees.”

The last Chevrolet Cruze rolled off the assembly line on March 6 at Lordstown, the first of five plants in North America to end production this year, and ending U.S. production of the Cruze.

The idling of the Lordstown plant is costing 1,500 jobs there. Since 2017, GM cut two of the three production shifts there, eliminating 3,000 jobs amid sagging demand for small cars. GM is continuing to produce the Cruze in Mexico for other markets, but not for the United States.

The company has noted that over 400 Lordstown employees had accepted offers at other GM locations and that jobs were available at other assembly plants for anyone willing to relocate to other states.

The 6.3-million-square foot Lordstown assembly complex has manufactured more than 16 million vehicles since it opened in 1966, including nearly 2 million Chevrolet Cruze cars since 2010.

(Reporting by Diane Bartz and David Shepardson; Editing by Peter Cooney)

Source: OANN

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Lajovic reaches maiden Masters final in Monte Carlo

ATP 1000 - Monte Carlo Masters
Tennis - ATP 1000 - Monte Carlo Masters - Monte-Carlo Country Club, Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, France - April 20, 2019 Serbia's Dusan Lajovic in action during his match against Russia's Daniil Medvedev REUTERS/Eric Gaillard

April 20, 2019

MONTE CARLO (Reuters) – Serbian Dusan Lajovic reached his first Masters final when he mastered windy conditions to beat Russian Daniil Medvedev 7-5 6-1 in Monte Carlo on Saturday.

Lajovic, who will take on either 11-times champion Rafa Nadal of Spain or Italian Fabio Fognini, trailed 3-0 in the opening set before going through the gears.

The 10th-seeded Medvedev could not hold the pace as whirlwinds swept across center court at the Monte Carlo Country Club.

Lajovic quickly moved 4-0 up in the second set against a frustrated opponent, who bowed out on the second match point.

(Reporting by Julien Pretot; Editing by Clare Fallon)

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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