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Sean Spicer: Dems’ 2020 Primary Debate Strategy ‘Likely to Fail’

The Democrats’ strategy for presidential primary debates is flawed, former White House press secretary Sean Spicer says.

Spicer made his remarks in a column published Tuesday in The Wall Street Journal.

“Recognizing the growing role of debates in shaping the race, the Republican National Committee in the 2016 election cycle asserted more control over their structure,” Spicer said.

“Now Democrats are trying to do the same, but they’re likely to fail where the GOP succeeded.

“The Democratic National Committee has proposed 12 debates, each taking place over two nights. The top 20 candidates can make the stage on one of the two nights by achieving at least 1% in three different approved polls or by receiving contributions from at least 65,000 individuals, including a minimum of 200 contributors in at least 20 states.”

But Spicer noted “the proliferation of candidates is the DNC’s first problem.” He pointed out the party is likely to have more than “20 candidates meet at least one of its criteria.”

However, he said the “biggest threat” to the Democrats’ plan will likely come from the fact that the party excluded Fox News from hosting a debate. Spicer said Fox recently broadcasted a highly rated town hall meeting with Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who is running for the Democratic nomination.

And he said Fox News could host its own debates without adhering to the DNC rules.

“With 2.4 million prime-time viewers, it would be near impossible for many candidates to say no, especially those near the bottom looking to break out,” he said.

Source: NewsMax Politics

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Senate Dems Unveil Voting, Ethics Overhaul

Senate Democrats have unveiled legislation making it easier to vote and curbing the influence of big money in politics.

The bill is destined to go nowhere in the Republican-run Senate. But Democrats see it as a way to make populist appeals to voters in next year's presidential and congressional elections.

Chief sponsor Sen. Tom Udall of New Mexico says every Senate Democrat is sponsoring the measure. He says the bill will be a "defining moment" when Democratic candidates talk about their effort and Republicans defend "the status quo."

The Democratic-run House approved similar legislation earlier this month. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky has criticized that bill, saying it would rewrite election rules to benefit Democrats. McConnell is not expected to let the Senate measure advance in his chamber.

Source: NewsMax Politics

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Case dismissed amid review of Houston cop's work

Prosecutors have dismissed one of the cases being re-examined because they involved a Houston officer accused of lying in an affidavit that led to a deadly drug raid last month.

Court records show the drug case against Courtney Jacobs was dismissed Wednesday, the same day the Harris County District Attorney's Office announced it will review more than 1,400 cases worked by Officer Gerald Goines.

The cases, including more than 25 pending before a court, came under review as the FBI launched an investigation into whether any civil rights were violated during the January raid that left five officers, including Goines, injured and two residents dead.

The veteran narcotics officer was discharged Thursday after weeks in Memorial Hermann Hospital, according to his lawyer, Nicole DeBorde.

A spokesman for the district attorney's office said Jacobs' case was dismissed because she'd been in jail for four months and prosecutors were not ready to go to trial. Goines did not file the charges against Jacobs but her case was included in the review because he was present at the arrest, according to Dane Schiller.

Jacobs' defense attorney, Marcus Fleming, said prosecutors informed him Wednesday that the case would be dismissed "in the interest of justice." He said he believes Goines' involvement was "a factor."

Last week, Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo said Goines lied in the affidavit that justified the warrant for the Jan. 28 raid on a home in which Dennis Tuttle, 59, and Rhogena Nicholas, 58, were killed.

DeBorde has said Goines is innocent of any crime.

The district attorney's office is in the early stages of reviewing cases Goines handled during his 34 years with the Houston Police Department and has not yet released the full list of court proceedings.

Each case will be reviewed individually and none of the other pending cases have been dismissed, Schiller said.

___

Associated Press writer Terry Wallace contributed to this report.

Source: Fox News National

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Officer, suspect hurt in shooting at South Carolina hospital

Police in South Carolina say a shooting inside a hospital has left a police officer and a suspected gunman injured - the second hospital shooting to take place in the state in two days.

A spokesman for the South Carolina State Law Enforcement Division says the suspect was being treated early Thursday at the Laurens County Memorial Hospital in Clinton when he shot the hospital's police officer and tried to flee.

The Greenville Health Authority Police Department officer returned fire, striking the suspect. Both were receiving treatment at the hospital for injuries. Their conditions were not immediately available.

Authorities say that on Tuesday, an armed man seeking mental health treatment was turned away from the Regional Medical Center in Orangeburg and disarmed. His girlfriend was told to bring him back Friday for treatment. Instead, he showed up with another gun Wednesday and opened fire in the emergency room, injuring a nurse.

The nurse was taken into surgery after the shooting and was in critical condition Wednesday afternoon.

Authorities identified the gunman in that incident as 23-year-old Abrian Dayquan Sabb. Affidavits provided by the Orangeburg County Sheriff's Office say Sabb has been charged with attempted murder and possession of a weapon during the commission of violent crime.

Source: Fox News National

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Man initially accused of abduction attempt returns to Egypt

An attorney says an Egyptian man who authorities say was falsely accused of trying to kidnap a young girl at a West Virginia shopping mall has returned home.

Public defender Michelle Protzman told The Herald-Dispatch Mohamed Fathy Hussein Zayan returned to his home in Alexandria, Egypt, on Sunday. The 54-year-old engineer had been in West Virginia for work.

Protzman says Barboursville police drove Zayan to the Charleston airport Saturday as a courtesy.

On Friday, Santana Renee Adams was charged with falsely reporting an emergency incident.

Adams initially told police a man grabbed her 5-year-old daughter by the hair inside a clothing store April 1 and tried to pull her away but stopped when Adams produced a gun. Adams later changed her account. Police said Zayan may have simply been patting the girl on the head.

___

Information from: The Herald-Dispatch, http://www.herald-dispatch.com

Source: Fox News National

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Israel recovers body of U.S.-born soldier missing since 1982

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gives a statement
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gives a statement regarding the recovering of the body of a U.S.-born Israeli soldier, Zachary Baumel, who went missing in a tank battle against Syrian forces in Lebanon in 1982, during a news conference in Jerusalem, April 3, 2019. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun

April 3, 2019

By Jeffrey Heller

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel has recovered the body of a U.S.-born Israeli soldier missing since a 1982 tank battle against Syrian forces, a case that had long vexed the nation, the military said on Wednesday.

Zachary Baumel, who immigrated to Israel with his parents from New York in 1970, was 21 when he fought in Israel’s invasion of Lebanon and was declared missing in action (MIA) along with two other soldiers in the Battle of Sultan Yacoub.

“The last words he wrote to his parents, on a postcard before Sultan Yacoub, were: “Don’t worry, everything is fine, but I probably won’t be home for a while,'” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a televised statement.

Lieutenant-Colonel Jonathan Conricus, an Israeli military spokesman, said Baumel’s remains were flown to Israel by El Al Israel Airlines several days ago.

Conricus declined to say how or where the body of Baumel, a tank crewman and sergeant, was recovered in what he described as an intelligence operation, and Netanyahu gave no details in his address.

In 2018, Russia – which Netanyahu is due to visit for talks with President Vladimir Putin on Thursday – said its troops in Syria had been trying to locate the remains of Israeli soldiers killed in previous conflicts.

Two other Israeli tank crew members are still listed by the military as missing in action from the June 10-11, 1982 battle.

Over the years, there had been unverified reports that Baumel and the other soldiers missing at Sultan Yacoub, Zvi Feldman and Yehuda Katz, might have survived the fighting and been captured.

The fate of Israeli air force navigator Ron Arad, whose plane crashed in Lebanon in 1986, has also never been clarified.

Israel hoped forensic tests might determine if Baumel was killed outright or died under other circumstances, Conricus said.

Baumel’s father, Yona, who died in 2009, led an international campaign to discover whether his son might still be alive.

“Today, we are lifting the uncertainty and closing a circle,” Netanyahu said, vowing continued efforts to discover the fate of Israel’s other MIAs.

He said Baumel’s tank crewman overalls and Jewish religious garment were found with the soldier’s remains.

“This is one of the most emotional moments I have experienced in all my years as prime minister,” said Netanyahu, who has been in office for the past decade and is vying for a fifth term in a closely contested election on April 9.

In 2016, in a ceremony attended in Moscow by Netanyahu, Russia returned an Israeli tank that had been captured by Syria at Sultan Yacoub and transferred to a Russian museum.

(Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Source: OANN

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Nike fines $14 million for blocking cross-border sales of soccer merchandise

The Nike swoosh logo is seen outside the store on 5th Ave in New York
The Nike swoosh logo is seen outside the store on 5th Ave in New York, New York, U.S., March 19, 2019. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri

March 25, 2019

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – EU antitrust regulators fined U.S. sportswear maker Nike 12.5 million euros ($14.14 million) on Monday for restricting cross-border sales of merchandising products of five European football clubs and the a football federation.

The European Commission said Nike’s illegal practices occurred between 2004 to 2017 and related to licensed merchandise for FC Barcelona, Manchester United, Juventus, Inter Milan, AS Roma and the French Football Federation.

The sanction came following a two-year investigation triggered by a sector inquiry into e-commerce and bans by some retailers on cross-border sales of some products.

($1 = 0.8839 euros)

(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee)

Source: OANN

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Tiger woods celebrates after winning the 2019 Masters
FILE PHOTO: Golf – Masters – Augusta National Golf Club – Augusta, Georgia, U.S. – April 14, 2019 – Tiger Woods of the U.S. celebrates on the 18th hole after winning the 2019 Masters. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

April 26, 2019

Tiger Woods is sending a message that he thinks he still has enough left, emotionally and physically, to win three more major championships to tie Jack Nicklaus’ record 18 titles.

Speaking to GolfTV in his first sit-down interview since the Masters, Woods said he has taken some time off since his victory at Augusta National, which still doesn’t feel real.

“Honestly, it’s hard to believe,” Woods said. “I was texting one of my good friends last night … that I couldn’t believe that I won the tournament. That it really hasn’t sunk in. I haven’t started doing anything. I’ve just been laying there. And every now and again, I’ll look over there on the couch and there’s the jacket.”

That’s the fifth green jacket for the 43-year-old Woods, who hadn’t won a major tournament since the 2008 U.S. Open. Along the way, four back surgeries, a divorce and other personal issues derailed him.

He said he has been spending time with his children – daughter Sam, 11, and son Charlie, 10 – who weren’t born when their father was the most dominant golfer on the planet.

“They never knew golf to be a good thing in my life and only the only thing they remember is that it brought this incredible amount of pain to their dad and they don’t want to ever want to see their dad in pain,” Woods said. “And so to now have them see this side of it, the side that I’ve experienced for so many years of my life, but I had a battle to get back to this point, it feels good.”

He said he hopes – maybe expects — they’ll see this side again.

And no one will take Woods for granted at the PGA Championship at Bethpage Black Course on Long Island, N.Y., which starts May 16.

Woods said he’ll be ready for a course he already conquered once in a major: the 2002 U.S. Open.

“I’m doing all the visual stuff, but I haven’t put in the physical work yet. But it’s probably coming this weekend,” he said.

Before Woods encountered health and personal problems, it was expected that topping Nicklaus’ major mark was “when” and not “if.” Then the certainty went away, but Woods thought he still had a chance.

“I always thought it was possible, if I had everything go my way. It took him an entire career to get to 18, so now that I’ve had another extension to my career – one that I didn’t think I had a couple of years ago – if I do things correctly and everything falls my way, yeah, it’s a possibility. I’m never going to say it’s not.

“Now I just need to have a lot of things go my way, and who’s to say that it will or will not happen? That’s what the future holds, I don’t know. The only thing I can promise you is this: that I will be prepared.”

–Field Level Media

Source: OANN

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Maria Butina, the Russian woman who was accused of being a secret agent for the Russian government, was sentenced to 18 months in prison Friday by a federal judge in Washington after pleading guilty last year to a conspiracy charge.

Butina, who has already served nine months behind bars, will get credit for time served and can possibly get credit for good behavior, the judge said. She will be removed from the U.S. promptly on completion of her time, the judge added, and returned to Russia.

MARIA BUTINA, ACCUSED RUSSIAN SPY, PLEADS GUILTY TO CONSPIRACY

An emotional and apologetic Butina said in court Friday she is “truly sorry” and regrets not registering as a foreign agent.

“I feel ashamed and embarrassed,” she said, adding that her “reputation is ruined.”

Butina has been jailed since her arrest in July 2018. She entered the court Friday wearing a dark green prison jumpsuit and spoke in clear English, with a slight Russian accent.

“Please accept my apologies,” Butina said.

Butina’s lawyer, Robert Driscoll, said after the sentencing they had hoped for a “better outcome,” but expressed a desire for Butina to be released to her family by the fall.

Prosecutors had claimed Butina used her contacts with the National Rifle Association and the National Prayer Breakfast to develop relationships with U.S. politicians and gather information for Russia.

Prosecutors also have said that Butina’s boyfriend, conservative political operative Paul Erickson, identified in court papers as “U.S. Person 1,” helped her establish ties with the NRA.

WHO IS MARIA BUTINA, THE RUSSIAN WOMAN ACCUSED OF SPYING ON US?

In their filings, prosecutors claim federal agents found Butina had contact information for people suspected of being employed by Russia’s Federal Security Services, or FSB, the successor intelligence agency to the KGB. Inside her home, they found notes referring to a potential job offer from the FSB, according to the documents.

Investigators recovered several emails and Twitter direct message conversations in which Butina referred to the need to keep her work secret and, in one instance, said it should be “incognito.” Prosecutors said Butina had contact with Russian intelligence officials and that the FBI photographed her dining with a diplomat suspected of being a Russian intelligence agent.

Fox News’ Jason Donner, Bill Mears, Greg Norman and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source: Fox News Politics

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An official Sri Lankan police Twitter account was deleted after it misidentified an American human rights activist as a suspect in the country’s Easter Sunday terrorist attacks.

On Thursday, police posted the names and photos of six people that they said were at-large suspects in the bombings that killed more than 250 people.

However, one of the names on the list was Muslim U.S. activist Amara Majeed, who quickly tweeted that she had been falsely identified.

“I have this morning been FALSELY identified by the Sri Lankan government as one of the ISIS terrorists that committed the Easter attacks in Sri Lanka. What a thing to wake up to!” she wrote.

SRI LANKA AUTHORITIES SAY EASTER ATTACK LEADER KILLED IN ONE OF NINE HOTEL BOMBINGS

She wrote in a follow-up tweet that the claim was “obviously completely false” and asked social media users to “please stop implicating and associating me with these horrific attacks.”

“And next time, be more diligent about releasing such information that has the potential to deeply violate someone’s family and community,” she continued.

Later, she wrote an update saying police apologized for wrongly mistaking her as a suspect.

Police said in a statement: “However, although one of the released images was identified as one Abdul Cader Fathima Khadhiya in the information provided by the CID, the CID has now informed that a) the individual whose image was labeled as Abdul Cader Fathima Khadiya is not in fact Abdul Cader Fathima Khadiya b) the individual pictured is not wanted for questioning c) Abdul Cader Fathima is the correct name of the suspect wanted by the CID.”

On Friday, the account, @SriLankaPolice2 was deleted with no explanation. Police did not release more information regarding the mistake.

Majeed, who founded “The Hijab Project” when she was 16 years old, told the Baltimore Sun that it was hurtful to be linked to the attacks.

“Sri Lanka is my motherland,” the Brown University student said. “It’s very painful to be associated with [the bombings].”

CLICK HERE FOR THE FOX NEWS APP

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

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source: Fox News World

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

April 26, 2019

By Tom Lasseter and Shri Navaratnam

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

INTELLIGENCE FAILINGS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“LIKE A SPOILED CHILD”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ONLINE RADICAL

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“HARD TO TAKE”

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

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

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

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

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

Zahran went into hiding once more.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Source: OANN

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