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Report: Former NFL receiver Stewart arrested for gun possession

FILE PHOTO: NFL: New York Jets at Washington Redskins
FILE PHOTO: Aug 16, 2018; Landover, MD, USA; New York Jets wide receiver ArDarius Stewart (18) is tackled by Washington Redskins defensive back Fish Smithson (37) during the second half at FedEx Field. Mandatory Credit: Brad Mills-USA TODAY Sports

April 11, 2019

Former Alabama wide receiver and New York Jets draft pick ArDarius Stewart was arrested in Tuscaloosa, Ala., Thursday for carrying a pistol without a permit, AL.com reported.

Stewart was being held on $500 bond, according to the report.

Stewart was selected by the Jets in the third round of the 2017 draft after a decorated career with the Crimson Tide. Stewart caught 129 passes for 1,713 yards and 12 touchdowns at Alabama in three years.

Stewart played 15 games as a rookie for the Jets but caught just six passes for 82 yards before being cut in 2018 in the aftermath of a two-game suspension for testing positive for a performance enhancing drug.

The Raiders and Redskins signed Stewart to their practice squads late last year and both teams released him shortly thereafter, most recently the Redskins in January.

–Field Level Media

Source: OANN

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Possible peace declaration looms large over Kim-Trump summit

With their second summit fast approaching, speculation is growing that President Donald Trump may try to persuade North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to commit to denuclearization by giving him something he wants more than almost anything else: an announcement of peace and an end to the Korean War.

Such an announcement could make history. It would be right in line with Trump's opposition to "forever wars." And, coming more than six decades after the fighting essentially ended, it just seems like common sense.

But, if not done carefully, it could open up a whole new set of problems for Washington.

Here's why switching the focus of the ongoing talks between Pyongyang and Washington from denuclearization to peace would be a risky move — and why it might be exactly what Kim wants when the two leaders meet in Hanoi on Feb. 27-28.

___

THE STANDOFF

The Korean Peninsula was divided at the 38th parallel after World War II, with the U.S. claiming a zone of influence in the south and the Soviet Union in the north. Within five years, the two Koreas were at war.

Though the shooting stopped in 1953, the conflict ended with an armistice, essentially a ceasefire signed by North Korea, China and the 17-nation, U.S.-led United Nations Command that was supposed to be replaced by a formal peace treaty. But both sides instead settled ever deeper into Cold War hostilities marked by occasional outbreaks of violence.

The conflict in Korea is technically America's longest war.

North Korea, which saw all of its major cities and most of its infrastructure destroyed by U.S. bombers during the war, blames what it sees as Washington's unrelenting hostility over the past 70 years as ample justification for its nuclear weapons and long-range missiles. It claims they are purely for self-defense.

The U.S., on the other hand, maintains a heavy military presence in South Korea to counter what it claims is the North's intention to invade and assimilate the South. It has also implemented a long-standing policy of ostracizing the North and backing economic sanctions.

Trump escalated the effort to squeeze the North with a "maximum pressure" strategy that remains in force.

A combination of that strategy and the North's repeated tests of missiles believed capable of delivering its nuclear weapons to the U.S. mainland are what brought the two countries to the negotiating table.

___

WHY KIM WANTS A TREATY

Getting a formal peace treaty has been high on the wish list of every North Korean leader, starting with Kim Jong Un's grandfather, Kim Il Sung.

A peace treaty would bring international recognition, probably at least some easing of trade sanctions, and a likely reduction in the number of U.S. troops south of the Demilitarized Zone.

If done right, it would be a huge boost to Kim's reputation at home and abroad. And, of course, to the cause of peace on the Korean Peninsula at a time when Pyongyang says it is trying to shift scarce resources away from defense so that it can boost its standard of living and modernize its economy with a greater emphasis on science and technology.

Washington has a lot to gain, too.

Trump has said he would welcome a North Korea that is more focused on trade and economic growth. Stability on the peninsula is good for South Korea's economy and probably to Japan's as well.

Though Trump hasn't stressed human rights, eased tensions could create the space needed for the North to loosen its controls over political and individual freedoms.

But it's naive to expect North Korea to suddenly change its ways.

According to a recent estimate, it has over the past year continued to expand its nuclear stockpile. And even as it has stepped up its diplomatic overtures to the outside world, Pyongyang has doubled down internally on demanding loyalty to its totalitarian system.

___

PEACE OR APPEASEMENT?

After his first summit with Kim, in Singapore last June, Trump declared the nuclear threat was over.

He isn't saying that anymore.

Trump made no mention of the word "denuclearization" during his State of the Union address. Instead, he called his effort a "historic push for peace on the Korean Peninsula" and stressed that Kim hasn't conducted any nuclear or missile tests, released Americans who had been jailed in the North and returned the remains of dozens of Americans killed in the war.

Kim, meanwhile, has good reason to want to turn his summits with Trump into "peace talks."

The biggest win for the North would be to get a peace declaration while quietly abandoning denuclearization altogether, or by agreeing to production caps or other measures that would limit, but not eliminate, its nuclear arsenal. Simply having a summit without a clear commitment to denuclearization goes a long way toward establishing him as the leader of a de facto nuclear state.

Unless Washington is willing to accept him as such, that will only make future talks all the more difficult.

The U.S. has, however, continued to take a hard line in lower-level negotiations leading up to the summit.

Stephen Biegun, Trump's new point man on North Korea, stressed in a recent speech that as a prerequisite for peace, Washington wants a "complete understanding of the full extent of the North Korean weapons of mass destruction missile programs," expert access and monitoring of key sites and, ultimately, "the removal and destruction of stockpiles of fissile material, weapons, missiles, launchers, and other weapons of mass destruction."

The question is whether Trump will similarly challenge Kim or choose an easier and splashier — but less substantive — declaration of peace.

___

TALK VS TREATY

If he chose to do so, Trump could unilaterally announce the end of the Korean War.

It would be great TV. But it wouldn't necessarily mean all that much.

Trump can't by himself conclude an actual peace treaty. China, and possibly a representative of the U.N. Command, would have to be involved. South Korea would naturally want to be at the table. The U.S. Senate would have to ratify whatever they came up with.

Back in 1993, the administration of President Bill Clinton reached a familiar-sounding agreement with Pyongyang "to achieve peace and security on a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula."

The next year the two sides vowed to reduce barriers to trade and investment, open a liaison office in the other's capital and make progress toward upgrading bilateral relations to the ambassadorial level. In 2000, Clinton and Kim's father, Kim Jong Il, added a promise "of respect for each other's sovereignty and non-interference in each other's internal affairs."

But by 2002, George W. Bush was back to calling the North part of an "axis of evil." In 2006, North Korea tested its first nuclear device.

The lesson? Whatever grand proclamations are made, establishing real peace will go well beyond just another Trump and Kim summit.

But it could be a start.

___

Talmadge has been the AP's Pyongyang bureau chief since 2013. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram: @EricTalmadge.

Source: Fox News World

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South Carolina shootout leaves suspect dead, squad car riddled with bullet holes

A suspect who seemingly riddled a South Carolina deputy's vehicle with bullets was killed on Tuesday following a shooting with law enforcement, officials said.

The unidentified suspect was killed, but the Berkeley County sheriff's deputies involved in the shooting "are okay," according to a tweet from the department.

The suspect who allegedly shot the vehicle was killed, according to officials.

The suspect who allegedly shot the vehicle was killed, according to officials. (Berkeley County Sheriff's Office)

Deputies initially responded to a home in Huger, a town roughly 30 miles northeast of Charleston, after shots were fired.

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Photos uploaded to Twitter by the sheriff's office shows the suspect allegedly shot at least 10 bullets at a deputy's vehicle. It wasn't immediately clear what prompted the shooting.

Source: Fox News National

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Cal G McNeill announces transfer

NCAA Basketball: Washington at California
Feb 28, 2019; Berkeley, CA, USA; California Golden Bears guard Darius McNeill (1) high-fives a fan after the game against the Washington Huskies at Haas Pavilion. Mandatory Credit: Darren Yamashita-USA TODAY Sports

March 24, 2019

California guard Darius McNeill announced Saturday that he is transferring from the program.

As a sophomore, McNeill averaged 11.0 points and made 66 3-pointers this season as the Golden Bears went 8-23.

“After countless conversations with my family and weighing the pros and cons, I’ve decided it’s in my best interest to transfer from California Berkeley,” McNeill wrote in a note he posted on Twitter. .”.. I want to thank my teammates that I went to battle with. For the past 2 seasons, the adversity we faced is proof that we’re not just teammates but indeed brothers for life.”

The Golden Bears were just 16-47 in McNeill’s two seasons.

McNeill averaged 11.3 points and made 67 3-pointers his first season. The 3-pointers broke Allen Crabbe’s school record (62 in 2010-11) for a freshman.

Meanwhile, multiple outlets are reporting that head coach Wyking Jones will return for a third season despite the 16-47 mark during his tenure.

–Field Level Media

Source: OANN

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Trump to attend Normandy ceremonies marking 75th anniversary of D-Day

President Trump confirmed Thursday that he would travel to France in June to attend ceremonies marking the 75th anniversary of the Allied invasion of northern Europe during World War II, known as D-Day.

Trump announced his trip while meeting with World War II veterans in the Oval Office. When one vet told the president that he hoped Trump would be present at the ceremonies, the president answered, "I'll be there."

More than 160,000 American, British, Canadian and other Allied troops went ashore at five beaches in the Normandy region of northern France early on the morning of June 6, 1944, in the largest amphibious invasion in history. Dwight Eisenhower, then the supreme Allied commander in Europe, described the landings, codenamed Operation Overland, as the beginning of a "great crusade" to free the continent from domination by Nazi Germany.

D-DAY REMEMBERED: THE DAY WE KNEW WE WERE GOING TO WIN

"The eyes of the world are upon you," Eisenhower wrote in his Order of the Day for June 6. "The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe and security for ourselves in a free world."

Despite fierce German resistance, the Allies established a beachhead in northern France, dislodging German forces that retreated across northern Europe. Paris was liberated a little more than two months later.

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Trump traveled to France in November to commemorate the centennial of the armistice that ended World War I, but was heavily criticized for skipping a planned wreath-laying ceremony at an American war cemetery. The White House said at the time that the president's helicopter was grounded by bad weather, and that there was no backup plan to travel to the cemetery by motorcade.

"President Trump did not want to cause that kind of unexpected disruption to the city [Paris] and its people," White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said.

Source: Fox News Politics

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U.S. Navy, Coast Guard ships pass through strategic Taiwan Strait

The U.S. Coast Guard Legend-class maritime security cutter USCGC Bertholf (WMSL 750) pulls into Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam
The U.S. Coast Guard Legend-class maritime security cutter USCGC Bertholf (WMSL 750) pulls into Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawii, U.S. to support the Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) 2012 exercise in this June 29, 2012 handout photo. Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Jon Dasbach/U.S. Navy/Handout via REUTERS

March 25, 2019

By Idrees Ali

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States sent Navy and Coast Guard ships through the Taiwan Strait on Sunday, the military said, as the United States increases the frequency of movement through the strategic waterway despite opposition from China.

The voyage risks further raising tensions with China but will likely be viewed by self-ruled Taiwan as a sign of support from Washington amid growing friction between Taipei and Beijing.

The two ships were identified as the Navy Curtis Wilbur destroyer and the Coast Guard Bertholf cutter, a U.S. military statement said.

“The ships’ transit through the Taiwan Strait demonstrates the U.S. commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific,” the statement said.

“The U.S. will continue to fly, sail and operate anywhere international law allows,” it added.

Taiwan is one of a growing number of flashpoints in the U.S.-China relationship, which also include a trade war, U.S. sanctions and China’s increasingly muscular military posture in the South China Sea, where the United States also conducts freedom of navigation patrols.

Washington has no formal ties with Taiwan but is bound by law to help defend the island nation and is its main source of arms. The Pentagon says Washington has sold Taiwan more than $15 billion in weaponry since 2010.

China has been ramping up pressure to assert its sovereignty over the island, which it considers a wayward province of “one China” and sacred Chinese territory.

China has repeatedly sent military aircraft and ships to circle the island on drills in the past few years and worked to isolate the island internationally, whittling down its few remaining diplomatic allies.

The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency released a report earlier this year describing Taiwan as the “primary driver” for China’s military modernization, which it said had made major advances in recent years.

U.S. President Donald Trump has said trade negotiations with China were progressing and a final agreement “will probably happen,” adding that his call for tariffs to remain on Chinese imported goods for some time did not mean talks were in trouble.

(Reporting by Idrees Ali; Editing by Sandra Maler)

Source: OANN

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McConnell gets emotional on Senate floor saying farewell to longtime staffer

Sen. Mitch McConnel, R-Ky., generally is not known for getting emotional, but on Thursday the normally taciturn Senate majority leader choked up as he said farewell to his longtime spokesman.

Speaking on the Senate floor, McConnell was praising his departing spokesman and former deputy chief of staff Don Stewart – who is leaving for a job as executive vice president of public affairs at the Association of Global Automakers – when he became weepy.

“For more than 12 years I entrusted Stew with my words and my goals and my reputation and he’s never let me down,” McConnell said as his voice began to quaver. “He never flagged, he never slowed.”

MCCONNELL: ENOUGH SENATE VOTES TO REJECT TRUMP'S WALL MOVE 

After a long pause to gather himself, McConnell continued, saying that “Stew” was “totally trustworthy, completely reliable, unbelievably competent.”

He added that Stewart was “the greatest luxury a leader could have.”

Stewart, who previously worked on the staffs of Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and former Sens. Paul Coverdell, R-Ga., and Phil Gramm, R-Texas, before joining McConnell’s team, will oversee the Association of Global Automakers’ government affairs and communications activities.

“I am excited to join such a vibrant, innovative, and globally competitive industry, particularly one focused on increasing jobs and opportunities across our country,” Stewart said in a statement. “I look forward to expanding and integrating Global Automakers engagement in Washington and across the country.”

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Despite his reputation for stoicism, this is not the first time McConnell has shown his emotions when saying goodbye to a longtime staffer.

In 2010, the Kentucky Republican broke down in tears on the Senate floor when speaking about his departing chief of staff Kyle Simmons.

“Now that he's leaving, I'm just as confident that our office will carry on just as it always has because he leaves a fantastic team behind,” McConnell said, according to the CNN.  “He's made the right decision, as he usually does," but he "leaves behind an office and a boss that will miss him terribly."

Source: Fox News Politics

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

April 26, 2019

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

–Field Level Media

Source: OANN

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

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

MARIA BUTINA, ACCUSED RUSSIAN SPY, PLEADS GUILTY TO CONSPIRACY

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

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

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

“Please accept my apologies,” Butina said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Source: Fox News Politics

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source: Fox News World

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

April 26, 2019

By Tom Lasseter and Shri Navaratnam

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

INTELLIGENCE FAILINGS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“LIKE A SPOILED CHILD”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ONLINE RADICAL

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“HARD TO TAKE”

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

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

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

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

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

Zahran went into hiding once more.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Source: OANN

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