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Fed policymakers saw little risk from patient stance: minutes

FILE PHOTO: A guard walks in front of a Federal Reserve image before press conference in Washington
FILE PHOTO: A security guard walks in front of an image of the Federal Reserve following the two-day Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) policy meeting in Washington, DC, U.S. on March 16, 2016. REUTERS/Kevin/File Photo

February 20, 2019

(Reuters) – Federal Reserve policymakers thought pausing on U.S. interest rate hikes last month posed little risk and plenty of benefit, minutes from their Jan. 29-30 meeting showed, giving them time to assess the effects of a global slowdown and the Fed’s rate hikes to date on U.S. economic momentum.

“Many participants suggested that it was not yet clear what adjustments to the target range for the federal funds rate may be appropriate later this year,” according to the official record of the Fed’s most recent policy meeting, released on Wednesday. “Several of these participants argued that rate increases might prove necessary only if inflation outcomes were higher than in their baseline outlook.”

The U.S. central bank caught markets off guard last month by suspending a three-year campaign to raise interest rates, saying it would be patient about making any adjustments to its target range for short-term interest rates, now at between 2.25 percent and 2.5 percent.

It also signaled it may slow or end reductions to its $4 trillion balance sheet, a process it had previously characterized as being on automatic pilot.

The surprisingly dovish decision came amid mounting headwinds to U.S. growth, including slowing Chinese and European economies and waning stimulus from the 2018 U.S. tax cuts.

Unanswered was the question of how long the Fed would remain “patient” on policy, and if the central bank’s next policy move would be to ease, rather than tighten, policy.

A raft of Fed policymakers speaking since the Fed’s January pledge of patience have insisted the economy is in a good place.

But doubts have remained, with traders in U.S. interest-rate futures placing increasing bets that the Fed will need to ease policy by early next year to counter a downturn.

(Reporting by Ann Saphir; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

Source: OANN

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Italy considering compensation claim against EU over bank rescue: Conte

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

March 22, 2019

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Reporting by Francesco Guarascio; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Source: OANN

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Starr: Concerns Mueller Report Not Written ‘Fair, Balanced’

Former independent counsel Ken Starr said Wednesday there are legitimate concerns over whether the report of special counsel Robert Mueller has been written "in a fair and balanced way."

In remarks on Fox News' "America's Newsroom," Starr noted "so many questions have been raised" about the alleged bias of the Mueller investigative team ahead of the release of their full report Thursday.

"They've had the opportunity — without any kind of check or balance — to write whatever they want to write," Starr said. "And that I think legitimately raises concern of fairness and balance."

Star said the frustration after the release will also be "we don't have it all" because of legally necessary redactions — and readers' tendencies will be for "cherry picking."

"It is inevitable . . . a lot of interpretation and extrapolation," he said, adding: "It would be good if we could call a national timeout and actually review what we have and then come to a more sober judgment. But politics is politics."

Source: NewsMax America

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Watch Anthony Pettis Defeat Stephen Thompson At UFC Fight Night 148

Anthony Pettis lit up Stephen Thompson at UFC Fight Night 148.

Pettis rocked Thompson late Saturday night in impressive fashion, and the video is downright incredible. (SLIDESHOW: These UFC Women Really Hate Wearing Clothes)

The Wisconsin-native put Thompson on the ground, and followed that up with a ton of brutal shots as the ref rushed in to stop the fight. (SLIDESHOW: These Are The Greatest Ronda Rousey Photos On The Internet)

Watch the incredible video below.

My friends, that’s what we call getting annihilated. Pettis just absolutely destroyed his opponent, and there’s no other way to describe it. (SLIDESHOW: These Are The Sexiest Paige VanZant Photos On The Internet)

I can remember the last time I saw a UFC fight that ended in such a dominating fashion. There are people who get rocked all the time, but that was on a different level.

Thompson looked like he was dead by the time Pettis stopped.

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A post shared by Anthony Pettis (@showtimepettis) on

Well done, Pettis. That’s the kind of action UFC fans are craving. It’s always good to remind the world that you’re not the man to step into the octagon with.

Follow David Hookstead on Twitter

Source: The Daily Caller

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Florida suspect behind pipe bombs sent to prominent Democrats, media agencies pleads guilty

The man accused of sending a slew of mail bombs to prominent Democrats across the country last year entered a guilty plea in New York federal court on Thursday.

Cesar Sayoc pleaded guilty to all 65 counts against him. He was accused of using a weapon of mass destruction, interstate transportation of an explosive, conveying threat in interstate commerce, illegal mailing of an explosive with intent to kill or injury and carrying explosive during commission of a felony.

In accordance with a plea agreement, he is facing life in prison with an additional 120 months.

SUSPECT ARRESTED IN FLORIDA IN CONNECTION WITH SUSPICIOUS PACKAGES SENT TO DEMOCRATS

Sayoc, a 56-year-old who lived in Aventura, Florida, was accused of mailing explosives to more than a dozen targets last year. Among them included liberal billionaire George Soros, former President Barack Obama, former Vice President Joe Biden and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Devices were also mailed to CNN offices in New York and Atlanta. None of the devices ultimately exploded.

Authorities arrested the suspect in October at an auto parts store in Plantation, Florida, located about 20 miles from Opa-locka, where investigators discovered several suspicious packages in a U.S. postal facility.

CESAR SAYOC, PACKAGE BOMB SUSPECT, ALLEGEDLY STARTED PLANNING ‘TERROR CAMPAIGN’ IN JULY, PROSECUTORS SAY

During his court appearance Thursday, Sayoc read aloud a statement and said he "made devices designed to look like" a bomb and sent them through the mail. He sent 16 devices, mailed from South Florida, “with intent to threaten or intimidate.”

Sayoc, who became emotional as he wrapped up his remarks, apologized and said, “I know these actions were wrong."

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When asked by the judge whether he had planned for the devices “to explode,” Sayoc replied, “no sir.”

The judge set Sayoc’s sentencing date for Sept. 12.

Fox News’ Tamara Gitt, Lissa Kaplan, Maria Paronich, Jennifer Earl, Barnini Chakraborty and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source: Fox News National

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Finland’s ombudsman to investigate any Nokia-branded phones data breaches

Visitors gather outside the Nokia booth at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona
FILE PHOTO: Visitors gather outside the Nokia booth at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, February 26, 2019. REUTERS/Sergio Perez

March 21, 2019

HELSINKI (Reuters) – Finland’s data protection ombudsman said on Thursday he would investigate whether there was any data breach by Nokia-branded phones after Norway’s public broadcaster reported that it had proof the mobiles had sent data to China.

Ombudsman Reijo Aarnio told Reuters he would assess whether there were any breaches that involved “personal information and if there has been a legal justification for this.”

Nokia-branded mobile phones are developed by a separate Finnish company HMD Global. Nokia declined to comment and HMD Global was not immediately available.

(Reporting by Anne Kauranen; Editing by Edmund Blair)

Source: OANN

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Toddler survives 60-foot fall from apartment, lands on car

Authorities say a 20-month-old boy survived a six-story fall from suburban Seattle apartment window after the toddler landed on the roof of a parked car that cushioned the impact of the plunge.

Redmond police spokesman James Perry told the KIRO television station that the toddler "landed in a way where the car absorbed enough of the impact that he was awake and crying when paramedics arrived" Wednesday afternoon.

The boy was in serious but stable condition at a hospital.

Perry said the toddler was alone in a bedroom, while his mother and two siblings were in another room.

Investigators believe the boy propped himself on the edge of a window that was cracked open, pushed through a screen and tumbled about 60 feet (18 meters).

___

This story has been updated to correct that the child fell on Wednesday, not Tuesday.

Source: Fox News National

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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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