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Arizona mom allegedly punched son for being a bad lookout as grandma tried to shoplift

An Arizona mother was arrested for allegedly assaulting her son for not keeping a "good enough" lookout as his grandmother shoplifted.

Rebecca Gonzales, 27, was taken into custody after police officers in Phoenix claimed to have witnessed her beating her 7-year-old son, according to court documents published by AZFamily.com.

Rebecca Gonzales, 27, was arrested for allegedly assaulting her son for not being a "good enough" lookout for his shoplifting grandmother.

Rebecca Gonzales, 27, was arrested for allegedly assaulting her son for not being a "good enough" lookout for his shoplifting grandmother. (Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office)

Gonzales on Friday walked out of a Walmart parking lot when police officers spotted her "spanking" the boy, "then slapping him and finally punching him in the face."

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The boy allegedly told investigators that he was hit because "he didn't watch out for his grandma good enough" as she was shoplifting inside the Walmart, the documents alleged.

Gonzales was charged with aggravated assault, and is reportedly scheduled to appear in court for a preliminary hearing on April 30.

Source: Fox News National

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Rep. Nunes: Schiff-Cohen Meetings 'Shouldn't Be Shocking'

The news President Donald Trump's former attorney Michael Cohen met several times with House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff and his staff before testifying before Congress "shouldn't be shocking," Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., also a committee member, said Friday.

"They were clearly devising how they will roll out a new narrative," the California Republican told Fox News' "Fox and Friends." "Despite all of that, they still came out and came out with a fake news story that has now been debunked."

And no matter how much "witness tampering" was done, "you're not going to find collusion in this unless you talk about the collision that the Democratic Party and the [Hillary] Clinton Campaign was doing with Russians," Nunes said.

Even though he used the term witness tampering, Nunes acknowledged it was not in the legal sense, as there is "nothing illegal about talking to witnesses beforehand."

However, if it was a "real investigation," Republican and Democratic lawyers would have met with the lawyers of whoever was to testify, Nunes said.

Meanwhile, he said he finds speculation members of Trump's family could face any kind of legal charges.

"The whole point of this Mueller investigation was, was there collusion or not?" Nunes said. "It is like this mythical creature that's out there running around somewhere around the capital. You've got, you know, dozens and dozens of reporters who spend all day looking for this mythical creature. The Democrats, they prance out a new, new mythical creature every day. The press follows it."

Source: NewsMax Politics

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Iranian parliament labels entire US military as terrorist

Iranian media say the parliament has approved a bill that labels all U.S. military forces as terrorist.

The legislation is a step further after Iranian lawmakers last week approved a bill labelling U.S. troops in the Mideast as terrorist, a day after the U.S. terrorism designation for Iran's Revolutionary Guard came into effect.

The report by the semi-official ISNA news agency says 173 out of 215 lawmakers at the session voted for the bill on Tuesday.

The bill also demands the Iranian government take unspecified action against other governments that formally back the U.S. designation. Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Israel have all supported the Trump administration's designation.

The U.S. on Monday said it will no longer exempt any countries from U.S. sanctions if they continue to buy Iranian oil.

Source: Fox News National

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Washington Free Beacon editor in chief calls Trump-Barr the new Trump-Russia conspiracy

The Washington Free Beacon editor in chief defended Attorney General William Barr’s handling of the Mueller report and accused Democrats of creating another conspiracy.

“I mean we've gone from a Trump-Russia conspiracy, which seems to have been disproven by Mueller's investigation, to Trump-Barr conspiracy, which has been quickly adopted by the Democrats as the new political play,” Matthew Continetti said Tuesday on “Special Report.”

Continetti described Barr as the antithesis of former FBI director James Comey.

BARR SETS DEADLINE FOR SENDING MUELLER REPORT TO CONGRESS

Barr, the editor told Baier as a member of the panel, has "done everything by the book." This, in contrast to Comey, who he said "went ahead and inserted himself into the public sphere with his announcements about the investigations."

“He has done exactly what one would expect from someone who follows the book.”

Barr testified before a congressional panel on Capitol Hill on Tuesday in his first appearance since releasing a four-page summary of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation. Despite the Democratic criticism, he said his office is hard at work preparing to release the report (with redactions) “within a week.”

House Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., accused Barr of seeming to "cherry pick" from the report to "draw the most favorable conclusion possible for the president" during her opening statement.

WOW: CHELSEA HANDLER SAYS SHE HAS 'FEELINGS' FOR ROBERT MUELLER

Other Democrats made similar comments as Barr appeared before the House Appropriations Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Subcommittee for a hearing originally meant to address Barr’s fiscal 2020 spending request for the Justice Department.

Barr maintained that he is working "diligently to make as much information as possible available to Congress."

Fox News’ Brooke Singman, Gregg Re, Chad Pergram and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source: Fox News Politics

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The Latest: Mississippi university escapes storm damage

The Latest on a powerful storm system moving through the southern United States (all times local):

11:12 p.m.

Officials say there's some debris from a possible tornado but no injuries or building damage at Mississippi State University.

The 21,000-student university ordered students into basements late Saturday night as a tornado approached the campus in Starkville.

Residents report trees down and at least some minor structural damage to residential areas nearby, including some areas where students live off campus.

Mississippi State spokesman Sid Salter says university officials are still looking for damage, especially in outlying areas of campus. The debris on the campus may have been dropped by a tornado that had been confirmed on the ground southwest of the campus.

Heavy rains were also producing flash flooding in the area.

Starkville was full of visitors Saturday because Mississippi State held its spring football game and a baseball game.

6:15 p.m.

Authorities say a possible tornado has touched down in western Mississippi, causing damage to several businesses and vehicles.

John Moore, a forecaster with the National Weather Service in Jackson, says a twister was reported Saturday in the Vicksburg area of Mississippi and was indicated on radar. No injuries were reported.

News footage from the area showed shattered windows and rooftop debris from businesses, flooding in parking lots and cars with windows smashed out.

Moore tells The Associated Press by phone that meteorologists haven't yet confirmed it was a tornado. Severe storms crossing a big swath of the South, including parts of Louisiana and Mississippi, have knocked out power to thousands and caused some flash flooding. Damage also has been reported near Satartia, Mississippi, from the storms.

___

6 p.m.

Authorities in East Texas say two children were killed after a tree fell on a car as it was being driven during a strong storm.

The Angelina County Sheriff's Office says an 8-year-old and a 3-year-old died Saturday when the tree toppled onto the back of their family's car in Lufkin while it was in motion. Capt. Alton Lenderman says the parents, who were in the front seats, were not injured.

Additional details were not immediately available. In nearby Cherokee County, winds of up to 60 mph damaged two homes in the town of Alto, about 140 miles (225 kilometers) north of Houston.

___

3:10 p.m.

Authorities say about a dozen people in Texas have been injured in powerful storms that have spawned at least one suspected tornado and damaged homes and other property.

Robertson County Texas Sheriff Gerald Yezak (YEZ'-ik) told The Associated Press that a suspected tornado hit Franklin on Saturday, overturning mobile homes and damaging other residences. Franklin is a small city about 125 miles (200 kilometers) south of Dallas,

He says two people were taken to a hospital with injuries that aren't thought to be life-threatening and that about a dozen others were treated at the scene for minor injuries, including people who had to be extricated from their homes.

Yezak says two of the people injured Saturday when a likely tornado touched down near the cities of Hearne and Franklin were taken to hospitals with non-life-threatening injuries.

National Weather Service meteorologist Monique (moh-NEEK') Sellers says the agency received reports of downed trees, and damage to buildings and a transmission tower.

The storms are part of a large system moving through the southern U.S.

___

2 p.m.

A large storm system that dumped snow on Colorado and is threatening to make it a soggy weekend for many states to the south and east has drenched parts of Texas and spawned a possible tornado that didn't hurt anyone.

The National Weather Service says thunderstorms are expected Saturday from Texas to Alabama. The system shifts to the Ohio Valley and the Southeast on Sunday.

A tornado watch is in effect for East Texas through 7 p.m. Saturday. Winds of up to 60 mph (97 kph) were reported Saturday in Cherokee County, damaging two homes in Alto (AL'-toh) but not injuring anyone. Alto is about 140 miles (225 kilometers) north of Houston.

Forecasters in central Texas reported a possible twister Saturday in Robertson County, near Hearne and Franklin. Nobody was injured.

Meanwhile, the Dallas area has received more than 2 inches (5 centimeters) of rain.

Source: Fox News National

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Texas boy, 9, missing since 2017 found in Florida

Investigators in Florida said Saturday they had located a 9-year-old Texas boy who had not been seen since the end of 2017.

Joshua Graham was found in Sanford with his father, Kenneth, as police were investigating a report of a suspicious vehicle at around 6:30 a.m.

The investigators said Kenneth Graham, 52, left Texas without telling his wife. They also said Kenneth Graham had previously lived in Tallahassee, Fla., and they assumed that he was taking Joshua there.

Joshua's mother was granted sole custody of the boy in February 2018 and Joshua was reported missing and "abducted by non-custodial parent" this past Tuesday.

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"Regardless of the circumstances, the feelings of loss and devastation are indescribable when any child is taken from a parent," Sanford Police Chief Cecil Smith said in a statement. "The officers and investigators involved in this case are delighted to have played a significant role in reuniting this mother with her child after two long years. I am proud that the officers responding to this call quickly identified that something didn't seem right and those instincts led to this happy conclusion."

Joshua was placed in the custody of Child Protective Services pending reunification with his mother. Sanford police said Kenneth Graham may face criminal charges in Texas at a later date.

Click for more from Fox35.com.

Source: Fox News National

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FTC loses Shire appeal, losing round in fight against citizen petition abuse

The Federal Trade Commission building is seen in Washington
FILE PHOTO: The Federal Trade Commission building is seen in Washington on March 4, 2012. REUTERS/Gary Cameron

February 25, 2019

By Diane Bartz

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – An appeals court on Monday upheld a judge’s decision dismissing a lawsuit filed by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to fight the practice of brand-name drug companies using a government petition system to delay cheaper, generic drugs from coming to market.

The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a federal court in Delaware had been correct in dismissing the FTC’s lawsuit against Shire. Shire was acquired by Takeda Pharmaceutical Co last month.

The agency had objected to ViroPharma, which Shire acquired in 2014, filing 46 “citizen petitions” and other filings between 2006 and 2012 to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration regarding generic equivalents to its antibiotic Vancocin HCl, on the grounds that it resulted in delayed sale of a generic version.

But while the appeals court acknowledged that the delayed entry meant “hundreds of millions of dollars in profits,” it said that the petitioning activity had ceased and thus the company was not in violation of the law. This ruling agreed with what the lower court had said in March 2018.

The FTC said it “regrets the court’s decision and is considering its options.” Shire owner Takeda did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

(Reporting by Diane Bartz)

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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