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Ex-NBA player Bibby out as HS coach amid sexual abuse probe

Bibby heads up court around the defense of Portland Trail Blazers Patrick Mills during second quarter NBA basketball action in Miami
FILE PHOTO: Miami Heat's Mike Bibby heads up court around the defense of Portland Trail Blazers Patrick Mills during second quarter NBA basketball action in Miami, Florida March 8, 2011. REUTERS/Hans Deryk

February 26, 2019

Former NBA player Mike Bibby has been removed as the basketball coach of his high school alma mater pending an investigation into sexual assault claims made against him by a teacher at the Phoenix school.

Bibby, who played 14 seasons in the NBA, has been removed as coach of the Shadow Mountain High School boys basketball team after a teacher at the school filed a restraining order against him, the Paradise Valley School District told the Arizona Republic.

The district also confirmed to the paper that police are investigating the sexual assault claims made against Bibby. The district also is investigating.

“He is no longer eligible to volunteer as our coach pending the outcome of the investigations,” Becky Kelbaugh, a spokeswoman with the school district, told the Republic in an emailed statement.

The Republic reports the restraining order was granted Feb. 22 over the incident that allegedly took place in February 2017 on school grounds. The teacher has accused Bibby of grabbing and groping her

“I can say with pretty much certainty this alleged incident didn’t happen and that will be shown down the road,” Bibby’s attorney, Donald Harris, told the paper. “Michael Bibby did not participate in a sexual assault of any way, shape or form that was alleged by this lady two years ago.”

Bibby won a state title at the school as a player in 1996 before going on to the University of Arizona, where he led the Wildcats to a national title in 1997. Bibby played 14 seasons in the NBA for the Vancouver Grizzlies, Sacramento Kings, Atlanta Hawks, Miami Heat, New York Knicks and Washington Wizards.

He was drafted No. 2 overall by Vancouver in 1998 and averaged 14.7 points and 5.5 assists in 1,001 career NBA games.

Bibby, 40, coached Shadow Mountain to its fourth consecutive state championship Saturday, the school’s fifth in his six years.

–Field Level Media

Source: OANN

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China’s bankers in uncharted waters as Shanghai launches U.S.-style tech board

FILE PHOTO: A man walks past electronic board showing benchmark Shanghai and Shenzhen stock indices, on pedestrian overpass at Pudong financial district in ShanghaI
FILE PHOTO: A man walks past an electronic board showing the benchmark Shanghai and Shenzhen stock indexes, on a pedestrian overpass at the Pudong financial district in Shanghai, China June 22, 2016. REUTERS/Aly Song

April 25, 2019

By Samuel Shen and Julie Zhu

SHANGHAI/HONG KONG (Reuters) – As Chinese investment banker Liu Guangfu prepares to file an application for his client to list on Shanghai’s Nasdaq-style technology board, he is heading into uncharted waters: how to price the new shares and sell them to the right investors.

Until now, guidance set by Chinese regulators on the pricing of initial public offerings (IPO) has led to artificially depressed valuations, making it easy for bankers to find investors.

“Selling IPO shares was easy before,” said Liu, whose client, a maker of high-end equipment, is seeking an IPO on Shanghai’s new Science & Technology Innovation board, which is due to launch as early as June.

“Now, you need to find interested investors and talk about the future of the company, and the industry. It’s time-consuming and costly.”

Liu and other Chinese bankers are entering a new world as Shanghai launches its new board, complete with the country’s first registration-based IPO system that is seen by some as the boldest reform yet in China’s capital markets.

The pilot project, likely to be expanded if it proves successful, is making China’s bankers nervous though, as they are more used to the paternalistic guidance of regulators than the debates – often contentious – between executives, bankers and investors that form the basis for deals priced in leading IPO centres such as Hong Kong and New York.

“It’s a huge challenge to us,” said Chang Houshun, managing director at Sinolink Securities in Shanghai, who described previous IPO underwriting efforts as “mechanical”.

The reforms will do away with government control of IPO quality and timing, and allow still loss-making new company start-ups to list.

It will also end the unofficial, but always observed, pricing cap of 23 times a company’s trailing profits – a ceiling that tended to ensure new floats a hefty 44 percent jump on debut, the maximum allowed.

Without government guidance, Chinese bankers, like their western peers, have to set IPO prices that reflect a company’s growth potential and risks, as well as the market mood and issuers’ expectations.

The seismic rule change will likely accelerate market consolidation and weed out weak players, Chang said: “You will see China’s Goldman, Citi and JP Morgan emerge. Apart from several dominant players, not many will be left.”

BASIC SKILLS

That fear and a desire to win new business has triggered a scramble among Chinese brokerages to hone their skills.

Many are replenishing their capital since the new market – unlike Hong Kong or New York – requires underwriters to share the risk and subscribe for between 2 percent and 5 percent of each IPO they sponsor on the new board.

Underwriters must then hold the stake for at least two years.

At least one brokerage, Shenwan Hongyuan Group Co Ltd, has reorganised its investment bankers into industry teams to try to develop specialist knowledge in sectors including technology and healthcare – skills not needed before. The company is also raising funds via a $1.16 billion listing in Hong Kong.

“We’re moving toward the structure of a global investment bank,” said Tu Zhengfeng, managing director of Shenwan Hongyuan’s underwriting unit.

“It’s increasingly important to identify a company’s intrinsic value, and you need expertise to do that.”

The brokerage is also building its distribution capacity, which was redundant when IPO shares were almost always hotly sought after by investors as pricing favoured a strong market debut.

Roadshows – a staple of western deals, where executives meet would-be investors – have long been considered formalities in Chinese IPOs.

“Now, you need to tell investors a company’s story well – investment highlights, why it’s worth buying, and how prices are set,” said Tu.

Zhao Jun, investment banker at China Securities Co Ltd, said bankers also need a stronger network of contacts to source IPO candidates, especially in the tech sector.

“Now, we need to consult with industry experts, work closely with our analysts, and even communicate with some investors who can help us understand the technology,” Zhao said.

ANXIETY

Peng Yigang, a senior executive at Shanghai Stock Exchange’s listing department, said there was a general feeling of anxiety among applicants and bankers.

“Many people come to us, asking for an answer (regarding their IPO applications). I said, sorry, we cannot give you an answer. Under the registration system, regulators no longer give you any answers. The market will decide,” he told a recent seminar.

Nearly 100 companies have submitted applications to list on the tech board.

To be sure, many bankers are sceptical that regulators will give up providing guidance completely, at least during the early stage, when demand will likely far exceed supply, potentially lifting valuations to extreme levels and raising the risk of a frothy market.

Previous attempts to help start-ups to list, such has Shenzhen-based Chinext, have largely foundered because early speculation sent prices soaring, only to later collapse spectacularly, souring investor sentiment to a point from which it never recovered.

Indeed, Hu Ruyin, former chief economist of the Shanghai Stock Exchange, said the broader opening up of financial markets in China posed a significant threat to the industry because it has had little experience pricing risks.

“Before you swim in the sea, you must learn how to swim in the pool. Otherwise, you would be drowned.”

(Reporting by Samuel Shen and Julie Zhu; Editing by Jennifer Hughes and Neil Fullick)

Source: OANN

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Security Council members report no progress on Yemen deal

Security Council members say U.N. envoy Martin Griffiths is reporting no progress in getting the warring parties in Yemen to withdraw their forces from the key port of Hodeida and two smaller ports as called for in an agreement they signed in December.

France's Foreign Minister Francois Delattre, the current council president, told reporters after Wednesday's closed-door meeting that his report was "not good."

Belgium's U.N. Ambassador Marc Pecsteen de Buytswerve was blunter, telling reporters: "At this point of time there is no progress so the council might do something."

Britain's U.N. Ambassador Karen Pierce said council members always said the agreement reached in Stockholm "is fragile — and this is proof that it is fragile." But she added: "I wouldn't say it was in more trouble than we expected."

Source: Fox News World

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PG&E extends deadline for board nominations

FILE PHOTO: PG&E crew work on power lines to repair damage caused by the Camp Fire in Paradise,
FILE PHOTO: PG&E crew work on power lines to repair damage caused by the Camp Fire in Paradise, California, U.S. November 21, 2018. REUTERS/Elijah Nouvelage/File Photo

February 21, 2019

(Reuters) – PG&E Corp, which filed for bankruptcy last month in the wake of California’s catastrophic wildfires, on Thursday extended the deadline by which investors must file paperwork if they want to install their own directors on the board.

Investors will now have until March 1 to nominate director candidates, the company said in a regulatory filing https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1004980/000095015719000167/form8-k.htm early on Thursday only hours before its original deadline was set to expire on Feb. 21.

(Reporting by Svea Herbst-Bayliss and John Benny in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila)

Source: OANN

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Indian statistics undermined by political interference, academics say

FILE PHOTO - India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi waits for the arrival of Norway's Prime Minister Erna Solberg during her ceremonial reception in New Delhi
FILE PHOTO - India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi waits for the arrival of Norway's Prime Minister Erna Solberg during her ceremonial reception in New Delhi, India, January 8, 2019. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi/File Photo

March 15, 2019

By Swati Bhat and Manoj Kumar

MUMBAI/NEW DELHI (Reuters) – More than 100 economists and social scientists have alleged that the Indian government is interfering with the country’s statistics-gathering agencies, putting their work “under a cloud”.

A statement signed by 108 academics from India and other countries, released late on Thursday, comes weeks before an election in which the government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi is seeking a second term.

Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has faced criticism from opposition parties for suppressing the release of jobs data and for having allegedly manipulated economic growth figures to show the economy having performed better under previous governments.

The acting chairman and another member of the body that reviewed the jobs data resigned in January, alleging interference by other state agencies.

The statement from the academics said economic statistics are vital for policy-making and it is imperative that agencies associated with their collection and dissemination are not subject to political interference and enjoy total credibility.

Indian statistics and the institutions associated with them have “come under a cloud for being influenced and indeed even controlled by political considerations,” it added.

The statement criticized NITI Aayog – a government think-tank – for picking what growth data sets to use last year, noting the body had “hitherto no expertise in statistical data collection.”

Amitabh Kant, the CEO of the NITI Aayog, denied the criticism. “There is no question of interference” in the handling of the jobs data, he said.

Rohit Azad, a professor at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi who signed the statement, said data should be “taken in an academic spirit” and not be taken as an attack.

“Whichever way the elections go, the assertions from the academic side should continue that you can’t mess with statistics,” he said. “If the data doesn’t show your government working, you don’t suppress it.”

(Reporting by Swati Bhat and Manoj Kumar; Editing by Richard Borsuk)

Source: OANN

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PM Modi files nomination papers in India’s general election

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has filed nomination papers in the Hindu holy city of Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh state, hoping to hold onto the seat for a second time in India's general election.

Modi was flanked Friday by Amit Shah, president of his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janta Party, and several state chief ministers.

Modi arrived at the local lection office after offering prayers at a local temple. As his car passed, people shouted slogans such as "Har Har Modi, or, Hail Modi!

Voting in three of the seven phases of the election have finished. Voting concludes on May 19 and counting is scheduled for May 23.

Varanasi goes to polls on May 19.

The election is seen as a referendum on Modi and his party.

Source: Fox News World

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Inmate who stabbed handcuffed prisoners, guard gets 86 years

An Ohio man serving life in prison for aggravated murder has been sentenced to 86 years more for a guard's stabbing last year and a 2017 stabbing that wounded four prisoners who were handcuffed to a table and unable to defend themselves.

The Scioto County prosecutor's office says 39-year-old Greg Reinke (RAN'-kee) changed his plea to guilty last week on charges including attempted murder for the attacks at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville.

Phone calls seeking comment from Reinke's lawyer were not answered Tuesday.

Reinke was sentenced to 54 years for using a shank to repeatedly stab the handcuffed prisoners.

He was sentenced to 32 years for injuring a corrections officer. Prosecutors say Reinke and another inmate stabbed that officer 32 times. The second inmate's case is pending.

Source: Fox News National

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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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