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Ride-hailing safety bill introduced days after South Carolina college student found dead

Just days after a young woman was murdered after accidentally getting into a car she thought was her Uber, legislation is being proposed in South Carolina to require drivers for ride-hailing services to have illuminated signs.

University of South Carolina student Samantha Josephson, 21, mistakenly got into the car of Nathaniel David Rowland, 24, car Friday night in Columbia, South Carolina, thinking it was her Uber ride, authorities have said. Rowland activated the child safety locks so Josephson was unable to get out of the car, according to police.

SOUTH CAROLINA COLLEGE REPORTS DEATH OF STUDENT, 21, A DAY AFTER SHE CLIMBED INTO CAR SHE THOUGHT WAS HER RIDE SHARE

The body of the woman, who was from New Jersey, was found dumped in the woods 65 miles away. Rowland was arrested after Josephson's blood and cell phone were found inside his car, according to police.

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South Carolina's state legislature is scheduled to debate the bill Wednesday. If passed, the “Samantha L. Josephson RideSharing Safety Act” would take effect 30 days after approval by Gov. Henry McMaster.

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

Source: Fox News National

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Woman in California gives birth to ‘a healthy baby boy’ at McDonald’s, police say

California police officers were called into action this week after a pregnant woman gave birth at McDonald's, officials said.

Madera police officers were called to the fast-food chain after a woman went into “active labor,” the department said on Facebook.

MIRACLE BABY GIRL IS BORN ON TOP OF A MANGO TREE DURING MOXAMBIQUE CYCLONE

The restaurant ultimately turned into a pseudo-delivery room, as there wasn’t enough time to get the mother to the hospital, police said.

Paramedics also responded to the McDonalds and “delivered a healthy baby boy,” according to the post.

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“It’s not everyday you get to help deliver a new born baby at McDonalds,” the police wrote.

Both the mom and her newborn baby were taken to the hospital and “are both doing well,” the post said.

Source: Fox News National

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No. 1 Notre Dame blasts No. 2 Stanford to make Final Four

NCAA Womens Basketball: NCAA Tournament-Chicago Regional-Notre Dame vs Stanford
Apr 1, 2019; Chicago, IL, USA; Stanford Cardinal guard DiJonai Carrington (21) shoots over Notre Dame Fighting Irish guard Marina Mabrey (3) during the first half in the championship game of the Chicago regional in the women's 2019 NCAA Tournament at Wintrust Arena. Mandatory Credit: David Banks-USA TODAY Sports

April 2, 2019

Jackie Young’s 25-point, 10-rebound double-double Monday night helped top-seeded Notre Dame rally from a nine-point second-half deficit and stop second-seeded Stanford 84-68 in the title game of the Chicago Region at Wintrust Arena, earning the right to defend its national championship.

The Fighting Irish (34-3) advanced to the Final Four in the NCAA Women’s Tournament, earning a matchup Friday night in Tampa against Connecticut. It’s a rematch of a regular season game in December that the Huskies won.

Arike Ogunbowale added 21 points despite making just 6 of 19 shots for Notre Dame, while Brianna Turner scored 14. Jessica Shepard stuffed the stat sheet, finishing with 11 points, 14 rebounds and four assists.

Kiana Williams paced Stanford (31-5) with 20 points, but converted only 8 of 22 attempts from the field. Dijonai Carrington chipped in 18 and Alanna Smith scored 14 points. The Cardinal made just 39.7 percent of their field goals and were outrebounded 48-38.

The Irish outscored Stanford 58-35 in the second half, pulling away with a 32-point fourth quarter. Ogunbowale’s 3-point play with 7:47 left in the game gave them a 59-48 lead, and the Cardinal couldn’t get closer than eight for the night’s remainder.

Stanford controlled most of the first half, using an excellent defensive effort to keep its high-scoring opponent under wraps. Notre Dame endured a 3 1/2-minute scoring drought after Ogunbowale opened the game with a 3-pointer, and the Cardinal took a 13-11 edge to the second quarter.

Stanford found a little more traction offensively in the final 6 1/2 minutes of the first half. It closed the half with an 8-2 spurt, capped by a Lexie Hull jumper with 49 seconds left that put it in the locker room with a 33-26 lead.

The margin was still seven almost halfway through the third quarter when the Irish finally got going. Young’s seven points in an 11-2 run over the final 2:17 of the period not only activated the large Notre Dame crowd, but gave their team a 52-46 advantage.

–Field Level Media

Source: OANN

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Man who tipped bar staff $22G arrested for intoxication, possession of firearm while drunk, reports say

A Tennessee man was arrested on public intoxication charges Monday after giving $22,000 in tips to the staff at a Nashville hotel’s bar, according to reports.

The suspect, identified as Joel Boyers, 39, of Bellevue, had waitresses competing over who would serve him, Nashville’s FOX 17 reported.

Hotel records show He’d purchased more than a dozen drinks from the minibar in his room and bought two more drinks at the hotel bar, the station reported.

OHIO JUDGE TELLS POLICE 'I AM SO INTOXICATED' AFTER ARREST FOR SUSPECTED DRUNKEN DRIVING, VIDEO SHOWS

Police were called to the scene after some of Boyers’ friends reported that they’d received strange texts from him, including claims that he’d taken drugs and was carrying a gun while drinking, the Tennessean of Nashville reported.

“He also made bizarre statements about giving away his child on Facebook,” an arrest affidavit says, according to the report.

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Police said Boyers told them he’d been drinking all day and had smoked marijuana as well.

The suspect handed his weapon to police, removing it from his pants pocket.

Boyers was booked into a Davidson County jail but was released after posting bond. He is due in court in March, according to the report.

Source: Fox News National

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

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

March 8, 2019

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Source: OANN

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Zuckerberg compensation more than doubles with $22.6 million Facebook paycheck

FILE PHOTO: Facebook's founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks at the Viva Tech start-up and technology summit in Paris
FILE PHOTO: Facebook's founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks at the Viva Tech start-up and technology summit in Paris, France, May 24, 2018. REUTERS/Charles Platiau

April 12, 2019

(Reuters) – Facebook Inc Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg’s compensation for 2018 more than doubled to $22.6 million, a regulatory filing showed on Friday.

The company has been marred by security issues in the past year that have dented the social media company’s stock.

(Reporting by Sayanti Chakraborty in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta)

Source: OANN

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Beto O'Rourke's 2020 bid draws mixed reactions in El Paso, Texas

Proper Printshop began printing the shirts as soon as they opened at 10 a.m. on Thursday.

The clothing featured phrases like “Beto 2020” with an image of the former El Paso, Texas, congressman wearing Old Glory sunglasses.

“It’s cool to know that someone from El Paso, a town like ours, can strive to do something that incredible,” designer Patrick Gabaldon said of Beto O’Rourke’s decision to enter the crowded field of Democratic presidential candidates.

WHY BETO O'ROURKE COULD BE DEMS' 2020 NOMINEE AGAINST TRUMP

Democratic presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke met with voters in Iowa, sharing his views on healthcare and climate change, among several issues.

Democratic presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke met with voters in Iowa, sharing his views on healthcare and climate change, among several issues. (Fox News)

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Gabaldon first created the images when O’Rourke was running for the Senate seat against incumbent Ted Cruz last year, a race that propelled O'Rourke into the national spotlight.

While he ultimately lost that midterm election to Cruz by a few percentage points, O’Rourke gained name recognition and became known for his fundraising prowess, raising an eye-popping $80 million during his run.

Though he initially said he wasn’t going to make a presidential run, O’Rourke reversed that decision, announcing in the wee hours of Thursday morning.

"Amy and I are happy to share with you that I'm running to serve you as the next president of the United States of America,” he said in a video.

By noon, several people had requested the shirts. Excitement among El Pasoans was growing.

WHO'S STILL ON THE FENCE FOR 2020? AFTER BETO, THESE DEMS COULD JUMP IN NEXT 

Proper Printshop made several shirts featuring O'Rourke, a few hours after the El Paso native announced his decision on social media. Several people have since requested the shirts. 

Proper Printshop made several shirts featuring O'Rourke, a few hours after the El Paso native announced his decision on social media. Several people have since requested the shirts.  (Fox News)

“I think he’s going to be a good run. I think he’ll do much better [than] our current president. And, I’m just a Democratic person. So he has my vote,” said Alan Zambrano.

O’Rourke was in Iowa for the first few stops along his campaign trail. He visited Keokuk, Fort Madison, Burlington, and Muscatine, rallying voters and sharing his views for the country.

He called for guaranteed, high-quality health care and action on climate change.

"This is our final chance, the scientists are absolutely unanimous on this, that we have no more than 12 years to take incredibly bold action on this crisis,” said O’Rourke.

Still, some are less than enthused about his run.

“I am not in support of him as a candidate. I believe that the Democrats have to sort out what they’re going to do. I believe that President Trump will continue as the president, and I wish Beto the best of luck,” said Steven Nagy.

Others say they have little faith in the political system at all.

O'Rourke gained national prominence last year while running for the Senate against Sen. Ted Cruz. He became known for his fund-raising prowess, though he ultimately lost the race. 

O'Rourke gained national prominence last year while running for the Senate against Sen. Ted Cruz. He became known for his fund-raising prowess, though he ultimately lost the race.  (Fox News)

“I’m disillusioned with the representation of the people. I feel that our political leaders are more representing the big business and money than the individuals themselves throughout the U.S,” said Tafari Nugent.

Though some say O’Rourke’s candidacy raises excitement among Texans, politics professor Todd Curry, from the University of Texas at El Paso, is wary of notions that the candidate could flip this red state.

“I still think we have to wait a few more election cycles until Texas is put into play,” said Curry.

O’Rourke is set to hold a kickoff rally in El Paso on March 30.

Source: Fox News Politics

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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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