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John Boehner Praises Mitch McConnell’s ‘Steady Hand’

Former House Speaker John Boehner had nothing but good things to say about Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in a new story.

Writing for the "Time 100," Time magazine's list of the most influential people, Boehner said his fellow Republican serves with bipartisanship in mind.

"Washington in recent years has been described as a place that lurches from crisis to crisis," Boehner wrote. "One person has done more to defuse these crises time and again than any other individual in American government. His steady hand at the tiller of the U.S. Senate has been a source of stability for our economy and certainty in our tumultuous political process."

Boehner went on to compliment McConnell's knowledge of "parliamentary procedure" and how things run in the Senate chamber.

"He has shaped the direction of the Supreme Court for generations to come," Boehner wrote. "He has done this while staying true to the priorities of the people from his beloved home state of Kentucky, who with good reason have entrusted him to be their voice in Washington.

"My friend Mitch McConnell is that leader. Whatever your politics or ideological inclinations may be, you and your family have been the beneficiaries of his experienced leadership in a challenging moment in our country's history. Our nation is blessed by his service and the wisdom he brings to high office."

McConnell has served in the Senate since 1985 and became minority leader in 2007, serving in the post until 2015 when Republicans took control of the chamber. He has been the majority leader since.

Boehner represented Ohio in the House from 1991-2015. His time as speaker lasted from 2011-2015.

It was reported in December that Boehner is writing a memoir on his time in office.

Source: NewsMax America

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The Latest: Mother refused to aid daughter during attack

The Latest on the fate of a Pennsylvania man who authorities say raped, murdered and dismembered his girlfriend's daughter (all times local):

4:25 p.m.

The mother of a slain and dismembered 14-year-old Pennsylvania girl testified in a packed courtroom that she told her daughter she had no interest in helping her as she was being attacked.

When her daughter Grace looked at her for help as Jacob Sullivan punched her in the face, Sara Packer said she told her, "I can't help you anymore. This is your life now."

Sara Packer testified Wednesday at the sentencing hearing for Sullivan, her boyfriend, who pleaded guilty in the 2016 rape, murder and dismemberment of Grace Packer.

A jury outside Philadelphia must decide whether he gets the death sentence or life without parole.

Sara Packer agreed to plead guilty in connection with her adoptive daughter's murder in exchange for a life sentence.

In a monotone, she testified that Grace had become what she called a "non-entity" and that she took part in the plot to kill her.

___

2:30 p.m.

The mother of a slain 14-year-old girl says her daughter had a tendency to be a "very difficult child."

Sara Packer wore a red prison jumpsuit Wednesday as she took the stand in a sentencing hearing for her boyfriend who pleaded guilty in the 2016 rape, murder and dismemberment of Grace Packer. A jury outside Philadelphia must decide on a sentence of death or life without parole.

Sara Packer agreed to plead guilty in her adoptive daughter's murder in exchange for a life sentence.

She said Wednesday she has a psychology degree and an IQ over 140. She lost her job as an adoptions supervisor in 2010.

Prosecutors say she hated Grace and shared a rape-murder fantasy with Jacob Sullivan.

___

12:40 p.m.

The younger brother of a slain 14-year-old girl says the only way he can bear his loss is if adults know her story and then act to prevent child abuse.

A detective read Josh Packer's statement in court Wednesday as a jury considers the sentence for his sister's killer.

Forty-six-year-old Jacob Sullivan pleaded guilty in the 2016 rape, murder and dismemberment of Grace Packer. A jury outside Philadelphia must decide on a sentence of death or life without parole.

Grace's adoptive mother, Sara Packer, has agreed to plead guilty in her murder in exchange for a life sentence.

Josh Packer says if his sister was told she could save other kids' lives by giving her own, she would ask, "What do I have to do?"

___

This story has been corrected to show the detective read the statement in court Wednesday, not Thursday.

___

11:40 a.m.

Family members of a slain 14-year-old girl are testifying how her death has impacted them as jurors consider a sentence for her killer.

Forty-six-year-old Jacob Sullivan pleaded guilty in the 2016 rape, murder and dismemberment of his girlfriend's daughter, Grace Packer. A jury outside Philadelphia must decide on a sentence of death or life without parole.

Grace's cousin, Karie Heisserer, told jurors Wednesday that it sickened her "to know that Grace was abused, tortured and literally thrown away like she was a piece of trash."

Grace's adoptive mother, Sara Packer, has agreed to plead guilty in her murder in exchange for a life sentence. Prosecutors say Sara Packer hated Grace and shared a rape-murder fantasy with Sullivan. She is expected to testify for the defense in the penalty phase of Sullivan's trial.

Source: Fox News National

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Maryland man wanted for tackling brown pelican in Florida

A Maryland man seen tackling a federally protected pelican on video is now wanted by Florida authorities on animal cruelty charges.

News outlets report the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission investigated the video of 21-year-old William Hunter Hardesty trying to capture a brown pelican at the Key West Historic Seaport. The video was taken March 5 and posted on his Facebook page March 8.

Monroe County State Attorney Dennis Ward told The Miami Herald the charges amount to five misdemeanors. Ward isn't sure whether police know where Hardesty is.

Reports didn't include comment from Hardesty.

Source: Fox News National

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Ecuador removes official over close Assange relationship

The government of Ecuador has removed an official from its embassy in London who is accused of having a close rapport with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Foreign Minister Jose Valencia told Democracia radio Monday the civil servant "worked in a very close way" with Assange. He did not provide the official's name or go into any detail, other than to say that embassy workers must respond first to the Ecuadorian state.

The removal comes as tensions between Ecuador and Assange continue to mount. Ecuador recently accused WikiLeaks of helping spread leaked personal documents belonging to President Lenin Moreno.

British police stationed officers outside Ecuador's embassy last week after tweets from WikiLeaks claiming Assange could be kicked out of the building where he has lived since 2012 within "hours to days."

Source: Fox News World

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Bangladesh high-rise hit by deadly blaze lacked proper fire exits, official says

Building is seen where a fire broke out in Dhaka
A building is seen where a fire broke out in Dhaka, Bangladesh, March 29, 2019. REUTERS/Mohammad Ponir Hossain

March 29, 2019

By Ruma Paul

DHAKA (Reuters) – A high-rise commercial building in the Bangladeshi capital where a blaze this week killed at least 25 people lacked proper fire exits, government officials said, prompting a senior minister to describe the incident as “murder”.

Lax regulations and poor enforcement have often been blamed for several large fires in the south Asian nation that have led to hundreds of deaths in recent years, at least 96 since last month.

Authorities have launched an investigation into the cause of Thursday’s fire, in which at least seven people, including a Sri Lankan, died after jumping off the 22-storey structure in one of the world’s most densely congested cities.

“There were no proper fire exits in the building that houses many offices and several restaurants,” Julfikar Rahman, director of the Fire Service and Civil Defence, told Reuters.

“It the building had proper fire exits, people would have been able to come out. There was little fire-fighting equipment in the building and it was not in working condition.”

At just two feet (0.6 m) and four feet (1.2 m) wide, the building’s two exits were too narrow for people inside to leave smoothly, and were blocked by obstructions that made the task harder, he added.

Reuters could not ascertain who owns the building, and a telephone number for the purported owner was switched off.

The Dhaka development authority said it was investigating how the owner, who had permission only to build 18 stories, managed to extend them to 22.

“It’s not an accident, it’s murder,” Public Works and Housing Minister Rezaul Karim told reporters after visiting the site, where firefighters combed through the ashes.

“Legal action will be taken against those responsible for violating the building code, no matter how powerful they are.”

Helicopters had joined 22 firefighting units in battling the fire, along with police and armed forces, as some of those trapped in the building waved desperately for help from its windows and roof.

The blaze comes a month after an inferno killed 71 people in an old neighborhood of the city. [nL3N20F745]

(Reporting by Ruma Paul; Editing by Krishna N. Das and Clarence Fernandez)

Source: OANN

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Mozambican families hunt for loved ones separated by cyclone

She struggled home with food, her small daughter and the proof she was still alive.

Veronica Fatia huddled on a wooden boat that left the cyclone-shattered city of Beira for what was now the unknown: the flooded town of Buzi, which for a week people had been fleeing with little but their clothes.

The fishermen's boats ferry the displaced daily to Beira, sometimes scores at once. But Fatia was going against the tide, up waters that recently carried corpses to the sea. More than a week after Cyclone Idai roared in, the muddy flood waters were still pouring off the river banks, draining what aid workers had called an inland ocean.

After the three-hour boat journey, carrying bags of rice and her 2-year-old daughter, Fatia stepped carefully out of the vessel and walked into the remains of Buzi, looking for her mother, hoping she was still alive.

She passed the Jesus Saves Bank now by a nearby three-story building where on the rooftop residents clustered in search of signal for their mobile phones. She passed the people now living in the open along the sandy main road, cooking, mending and a young boy read a textbook.

Her mother might be at the school, Fatia decided. A cry went up as she approached it and people came running.

"Mama!" She was there. They embraced on a concrete walkway now littered with cooking fires and tiny children, one nodding off beside a pile of still-warm ashes.

"My home is gone, but I'm also happy because I can see my family," Fatia said.

Her mother, Maria Antonio, said she had last seen Fatia the Tuesday before the storm. "I didn't know anything about her," she said. "I'm very happy to see her."

But the fate of her other daughter, in Quelimane, remains unknown.

It is a common heartbreak for thousands of families in central Mozambique, who have no way to learn about missing loved ones as destroyed communications networks struggle to return. People are desperately searching for family members separated by the flooding, destruction and death brought to the area more than a week ago by Cyclone Idai. Some will not be as lucky as Fatia.

The fishing boats between Buzi and Beira are now a lifeline, braving spattering rain, rolling waves and still the punching stench of death. Near Buzi, a dog's carcass hung from the branches of a tree.

Cut off from the world, people can easily panic. One member of the Mozambican Red Cross, Assane Paul, tried to calm a knot of people who had heard a rumor that another cyclone was on its way.

"If you don't answer well, we won't eat!" The people called out as he spoke to The Associated Press.

Other residents of Buzi try to adapt however they can, from the Bible reader on the rooftop blaming the cyclone on people's sins to the man walking down the road in soaking wet trousers. They were the only clothes left, he explained. It was very much wash and wear.

Many people were still on the move. Dozens waited at Buzi's small pier where the fishermen's boats pull up, bags of belongings at their feet and concern on their faces. Or they simply watch for news.

The other end of the journey is the beach in Beira. Small children and barefoot women were carried off on a fishing boat and gathered together by aid workers in a spitting rain. Some looked lost. Few carried much. One small girl stood alone, hugging herself, her eyes wide and pleading.

"I hid in the mosque," said a 12-year-old boy, Ramadan Gulam. "I was there for a week." He had come from Buzi with nothing but a bag of clothes and his brothers. "My father said to go because the floods would come again. ... I don't know what to do now."

Christina Machado came with her two children and a bandage on her ankle. It was cut by a tin roof during the cyclone, she said. It was treated just yesterday.

"I'm looking for my husband," she said. He had been working in Beira for two months. She didn't know where she would be taken next.

Francisco Mambonda spent about a week on a rooftop with nothing to eat. He and his wife and sons drank dirty water to survive.

Barefoot, shivering and in tattered shorts, he added another plea to the growing chorus: "I don't know what to do now."

Emergency responders still have some hope.

As night fell and one wooden boat from Buzi approached the flickering, generator-lit Beira skyline, another passed in the dusk. It carried soldiers to their duties. Some raised their guns and cheered.

Source: Fox News World

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Italy’s Salvini now ‘in sync’ with French over migrants, to meet Le Pen

Interior ministers of G7 nations gather in Paris
Italy's Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini holds a news conference during a meeting as part of the Interior ministers of G7 nations meeting in Paris, France, April 4, 2019. REUTERS/Charles Platiau

April 4, 2019

PARIS (Reuters) – Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister, Matteo Salvini, on Thursday praised the collaboration with France’s interior minister over immigration issues, in a sharp change of tone after months of acrimonious exchanges between Italy and France.

Ties between the two traditional allies had grown increasingly tense since Salvini’s decision to close Italian ports to migrant ships last year, culminating with France briefly recalling its ambassador to Rome in February.

“On these topics, I found myself absolutely in sync with Minister (Christophe) Castaner,” Salvini told reporters on the sidelines of a G7 meeting of interior ministers in Paris, citing illegal immigration and counter-terrorism in particular.

However, Salvini – leader of the far-right League party, and who is also in charge of Italy’s interior ministry – said nationalist leader Marine Le Pen remained his main ally in France and that he would meet her in Paris on Friday.

Asked about his relationship with President Emmanuel Macron, who has vowed to fight nationalists in upcoming European parliament elections, Salvini said: “I have never met Macron. We have different histories, different interests.”

(Reporting by Michel Rose, Editing by Sarah White)

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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