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John Yoo: Democrat calls to have full Mueller report released nothing more than a ‘publicity stunt’

Former deputy assistant Attorney General John Yoo labeled calls from the Democrats for Special Counsel Robert Mueller's full report to be released as nothing more than a "publicity stunt."

Yoo took aim at Democrats demanding to see the full Russia report, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, before warning it could lead to serious consequences going forward.

“I think Nancy Pelosi's demand for the report right away is just a publicity stunt,” Yoo told “America’s Newsroom.

“But there's something worse behind it which is are we really willing to sacrifice the long term, long-time rights of criminal suspects and witnesses who've long cooperated with law enforcement because of the secrecy provided by a grand jury.

TOP DEMS WANT REPORT, NOW SUBMITTED, MADE PUBLIC ASAP

"That's what Attorney General Barr is going through the report right now with his staff to delete or redact from the report. In exchange for the hill getting your report a week or two earlier.”

On Thursday, Speaker Pelosi, D-Calif., slammed Barr’s four-page summary letter on Mueller’s investigation as “condescending” and demanded to see the entire report.

“No thank you, Mr. Attorney General,” Pelosi said. “I don’t need your interpretation.”

“Show us the report. We have to see the facts.”

“I don't see why Nancy Pelosi or other members on the Hill need to get the report to it's faster and in exchange sacrifice the law that was approved by Congress which gives protections to give confidentiality to witnesses and people who cooperate with law enforcement.” Yoo reiterated on "America's Newsroom."

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He also criticized members of Congress for being overly dependant on the Mueller report saying they want to use it as a sort of scapegoat instead of doing their own investigation.

“I think what is going on here is that Congress doesn't want to do the work Congress can do the same work that Mr. Mueller did. They have the right to subpoena witnesses and they can bring the same people that Mueller interviewed and bring them before the Hill,” Yoo said.

“They don't want to do that because it's a lot of work and they don't want to take accountability, responsibility. It's much easier to let Mueller do it, have someone redact it and then claim some great political scandal. But Mueller doesn't have a monopoly on the truth. If Congress wants to investigate it they can and they should.”

Fox News' Andrew O'Reilly contributed to this report.

Source: Fox News Politics

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Woman who attacked man wearing 'MAGA' hat was illegal immigrant, taken into ICE custody: officials

A woman who was arrested last week for allegedly attacking a man wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat at a Massachusetts restaurant is an illegal immigrant from Brazil, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said.

ICE officers detained Rosiane Santos, 41, on Tuesday after they discovered she was in the U.S. illegally, Boston 25 News reported.

"Deportation officers with ICE's Fugitive Operations Team arrested Rosie Santos, an unlawfully present citizen of Brazil," ICE said in a statement. "Santos is facing local charges for assault and other offenses. She is presently in ICE custody and has been entered into removal proceedings before the federal immigration courts."

WOMAN ASSAULTS MAN WEARING ‘MAGA’ HAT AT MEXICAN EATERY, CLAIMS SHE'S THE VICTIM, VIDEO SHOWS

Santos, who was living in Falmouth, was charged with disorderly conduct, assault and battery after a confrontation at the Casa Vallarta Mexican Restaurant last Friday.

Bryton Turner, 23, told police he was at the restaurant when Santos started yelling at him because he was wearing the iconic red hat made famous during Trump’s presidential campaign. Turner recorded the incident on his phone. The video showed Santos walking behind him and hitting his hat off his head.

MAGA-HAT WEARING TEEN CLAIMS CALIFORNIA HIGH SCHOOL WOULDN'T PERMIT HER TO WEAR HAT

“That’s the problem – the problem with America these days. People are just ignorant,” Turner said in the video.

Geo Macarao, a bartender at the restaurant, told Boston 25 that Turner did not provoke Santos in the incident.

"No, no he just walked in and ordered his food,” Macarao said.

Santos later told responding police officers that Turner shouldn’t be allowed to eat at the restaurant because he supported Trump, who is calling to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

She later said she regretted the incident but claimed she was provoked, Boston 25 reported.

“I had a little bit to drink maybe that’s the reason that I couldn’t walk away but being discriminated for so many times in my life, I just had to stand up for myself,” she said. “He’s not a victim. I am the victim. I have been bullied, OK?”

Fox News' Lucia I. Suarez Sang contributed to this report. 

Source: Fox News National

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Tulane hiring Georgia State’s Hunter as coach

NCAA Basketball: NCAA Tournament-First Round-Houston vs Georgia State
Mar 22, 2019; Tulsa, OK, USA; Georgia State Panthers head coach Ron Hunter reacts during the first half against the Houston Cougars in the first round of the 2019 NCAA Tournament at BOK Center. Mandatory Credit: Brett Rojo-USA TODAY Sports

March 24, 2019

Tulane will name Georgia State’s Ron Hunter as the Green Wave’s new men’s basketball coach, Hunter confirmed to ESPN on Sunday.

Hunter, 54, replaces Mike Dunleavy Sr., who was fired earlier this month after three seasons and a 24-69 record — including 4-27 in 2018-19.

Tulane has not been to the NCAA Tournament since the 1994-95 season and has not posted a winning record since 2012-13.

As the head coach at Georgia State since 2011, Hunter has led the Panthers to the NCAA Tournament three times. Georgia State won three Sun Belt Conference regular season championships and three tournament championships under his direction.

Georgia State was 24-10 this season, which ended Friday with a first-round loss in the NCAA tourney. The 14th-seeded Panthers fell to third-seeded Houston, 84-55.

Hunter’s record at Georgia State after eight seasons is 171-95. Before that, he compiled a 221-179 record with one NCAA Tournament berth in 13 seasons as the coach at IUPUI.

At the 2015 NCAA Tournament, Hunter had to coach from a stool after tearing his Achilles celebrating the Panthers’ victory in the Sun Belt tournament. He memorably fell off the stool when his son, R.J. Hunter, hit the game-winning 3-pointer in 14th-seeded Georgia State’s 57-56 upset against No. 3 seed Baylor.

–Field Level Media

Source: OANN

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Reputed ‘Ripper Crew’ member registers to live in Aurora

Police say a man convicted of murder and suspected of belonging to a notorious gang that killed as many as 20 Chicago-area women in the 1980s has registered as a sex offender in suburban Chicago.

Thomas Kokoraleis was released from prison Friday. Aurora Police Sgt. Bill Rowley says the 58-year-old walked into the department Sunday and registered to live at Aurora-based Wayside Cross Ministries.

The Illinois Sex Offender Information registry lists Kokoraleis as living in Wheaton.

Kokoraleis was among four men accused of being part of the "Ripper Crew" satanic cult. He was initially sentenced to life in prison for the 1982 slaying of 21-year-old Lorraine "Lorry" Ann Borowski.

Prosecutors allowed him to plead guilty on appeal in a deal that infuriated victims' relatives but allowed for his release last week.

Source: Fox News National

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Brexit still pushing financial jobs from UK to EU: think tank

FILE PHOTO: The financial district can be seen as a person runs in the sunshine on London's south bank
FILE PHOTO: The financial district can be seen as a person runs in the sunshine on London's south bank, Britain February 23, 2019. REUTERS/Henry Nicholls/File Photo

April 3, 2019

By Huw Jones

LONDON (Reuters) – Financial firms in Britain continue to shift business to new European Union hubs and won’t stop unless Brexit is canceled, a think tank told British lawmakers on Wednesday.

William Wright, head of New Financial, said its study published on March 11 showed that 275 financial firms were moving some of their business, staff or assets from Britain to hubs in the EU to avoid Brexit disruption.

“Since the report was published we have found another 14 firms have set up new entities,” Wright told a House of Lords committee.

Moves out of Britain would continue under any Brexit outcome that fell short of cancelling Britain’s departure from the bloc as firms sought to end trading uncertainty, Wright said.

Andrew Pilgrim, an associate partner at consultants EY told lawmakers there was no going back for the big banks that have spent millions of euros setting up and staffing new EU hubs.

“For most people, they are beyond the point of no return,” Pilgrim said.

Britain was due to leave the EU on March 29 but departure has been delayed until at least April 12.

The prospect of Britain remaining in the EU’s customs union has increased, a step Pilgrim said would not give financial services market access to the bloc.

Brexit is also a catalyst to review business models and accelerate longstanding shifts in back office staff from Britain to cheaper locations like Poland, and to be closer to key customers, Pilgrim said.

Germany’s foreign banking association said on Wednesday that up to 5,000 new jobs in its member institutes would be created in the next 12 to 18 months due to Brexit.

The Bank of England expects about 4,000 banking and insurance jobs to have moved by Brexit Day, a fraction of the early estimates from consultants in the aftermath of Britain’s vote in 2016 to leave the EU.

If Britain leaves the EU with no deal, financial business could flow immediately from Britain to Singapore and the United States as they have access to the bloc, Pilgrim said.

Wright said there was now only scope to pause but not stop the flow of financial services business from Britain to the EU, unless Britain remained in the single market, a step the government has so far ruled out.

(Reporting by Huw Jones; Editing by Jan Harvey)

Source: OANN

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North Korean officials return to inter-Korean liaison office: South Korea

A North Korean flag flutters on top of a 160-metre tower in North Korea's propaganda village of Gijungdong, in this picture taken from the Tae Sung freedom village near the Military Demarcation Line (MDL), in Paju
FILE PHOTO - A North Korean flag flutters on top of a 160-metre tower in North Korea's propaganda village of Gijungdong, in this picture taken from the Tae Sung freedom village near the Military Demarcation Line (MDL), inside the demilitarised zone separating the two Koreas, in Paju, South Korea, April 24, 2018. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji

March 25, 2019

SEOUL (Reuters) – North Korea sent back its officials to an inter-Korean liaison office in the North’s border city of Kaesong on Monday, reversing a decision two days ago to withdraw the officials, South Korea’s Unification Ministry said.

A group of four to five officials showed up at the office earlier in the morning saying they came to work “as usual,” the ministry said in a statement.

Though the presence of the North’s head of the office was not confirmed, the two sides held a consultation and will “continue to operate the office as usual,” the ministry said.

(Reporting by Hyonhee Shin and Joyce Lee; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)

Source: OANN

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

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

March 18, 2019

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Source: OANN

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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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