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Turkey to boost capital at ailing banks in reform package: Albayrak

Turkish Treasury and Finance Minister Berat Albayrak attends a news conference in Istanbul
Turkish Treasury and Finance Minister Berat Albayrak attends a news conference in Istanbul, Turkey, April 10, 2019. REUTERS/Umit Bektas

April 10, 2019

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Turkish Finance Minister Berat Albayrak said on Wednesday the government would boost banks’ capital and valuable exports, and adjust taxes as part of a reform plan meant to revive an economy plagued by high inflation and a fragile currency.

Turkey’s economy tipped into recession late last year and suffered its worst quarterly contraction in nearly a decade, after a punishing currency crisis sent inflation soaring as high as 25 percent and left its companies and banks saddled with foreign-currency debt.

Albayrak, unveiling the long-awaited reform package to both Turks saddled with rising unemployment and jittery international investors, said the new measures applied to 2019 only.

The government would deliver debt securities worth 28 billion lira ($4.92 billion) to capitalize state banks and would also raise capital levels at private banks, he said. Dividend and bonus payments would be limited during an economic rebalancing period, he added.

Non-performing loans are expected to double this year at Turkish banks.

At its nadir last year, the Turkish lira lost nearly half its value against the dollar and finished the year down nearly 30 percent. The crisis – which shook global financial markets – was set off by strained U.S.-Turkey ties, concerns over central bank independence, and a build-up of leverage.

Albayrak said government loans would prioritize strategic sectors, exports and value-added and local production. He added the government planned to integrate the country’s severance pay fund with its private retirement insurance fund.

($1 = 5.6897 liras)

(Reporting by Ece Toksabay and Ali Kucukgocmen; Writing by Daren Butler; Editing by Jonathan Spicer)

Source: OANN

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U.S. drops reference to ‘Israeli-occupied’ Golan Heights in annual rights report

A couple look towards signs pointing out distances to different cities, on Mount Bental, an observation post in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights that overlooks the Syrian side of the Quneitra crossing, Israel
FILE PHOTO: A couple look towards signs pointing out distances to different cities, on Mount Bental, an observation post in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights that overlooks the Syrian side of the Quneitra crossing, Israel January 21, 2019. REUTERS/Amir Cohen

March 13, 2019

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – The U.S. State Department changed its usual description of the Golan Heights from “Israeli-occupied” to “Israeli-controlled” in an annual global human rights report released on Wednesday.

A separate section on the West Bank and Gaza Strip, areas that Israel captured along with the Golan Heights in a 1967 Middle East war, also did not refer to those territories as being “occupied” or under “occupation”.

(Writing by Jeffrey Heller; Editing by Rami Ayyub)

Source: OANN

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South Carolina men arrested after bodies of 2 women discovered buried at home, officials say

Two men have been arrested in connection with the deaths of two women after their bodies were discovered Friday on a property in South Carolina after one of the suspects confessed from a hospital bed to killing one of them after an attempt on his own life, officials said.

The Spartanburg County Sheriff's Office said on Facebook that Jonathan Galligan, 39, and Christian Hulburt, 41, were arrested and charged with murder Saturday after the bodies of 27-year-old Christin Renee Bunner and 40-year-old Melissa Fairlee Rhymer were discovered on the property of a home in Spartanburg.

"I cannot imagine somebody coming in telling me that they found my child," Sheriff Chuck Wright told FOX Carolina. "Especially in the condition that they were in."

MISSING FLORIDA WOMAN’S BLOOD FOUND ON SOCK, BOOTS BELONGING TO HER ACCUSED KILLER: DOCUMENTS

Authorities were alerted to the bodies at the home from an incident earlier in the week between deputies and Hulburt when they were called to a towing company Wednesday night on a report of a disturbance involving a man with weapons.

Christian Hulburt (left) and Jonathan Galligan (right) were arrested and charged Saturday with the killings of two women after their bodies were discovered buried on a property in Spartanburg, S.C., on Friday.

Christian Hulburt (left) and Jonathan Galligan (right) were arrested and charged Saturday with the killings of two women after their bodies were discovered buried on a property in Spartanburg, S.C., on Friday. (Spartanburg County Sheriff's Office)

When officers arrived, Hulburt would not comply with commands and eventually pulled out a gun and shot himself in the head in front of deputies, police told FOX Carolina.

After being taken to a hospital and surviving the gunshot wound, Hulburt confessed at the hospital to officers that he had witnessed Galligan kill Bunner at the towing company before helping him bury her behind a home in Spartanburg. Bunner had been reported missing in December, and was Galligan's girlfriend at the time, according to police.

The bodies were discovered on the property of a home in Spartanburg, S.C. on Friday after Christian Hulburt confessed to murdering one victim and burying the body there.

The bodies were discovered on the property of a home in Spartanburg, S.C. on Friday after Christian Hulburt confessed to murdering one victim and burying the body there. (FOX Carolina)

Officers tried to initially find the burial site on Thursday to no avail before returning Friday morning with cadaver dogs and interviewing Galligan about Bunner's missing person case. The sheriff's office said that Galligan immediately asked for an attorney, and was released because there was not enough evidence at the time to charge him.

When investigators returned to the hospital to speak with Hulburt, he confessed there was a second woman buried on the property as well. That woman, later identified as Rhymer, was killed at the home sometime in January 2019 and buried near Bunner's grave, police told FOX Carolina.

MISSING MOM CASE LEADS FBI TO GEORGIA LANDFILL

After providing additional details to where the bodies were located, cadaver dogs at the home eventually found where the remains of the two women were located. Rhymer of Mountville, S.C., who was not reported missing, was identified by fingerprints at a morgue.

A neighbor said he had not seen anyone at the home in weeks.

A neighbor said he had not seen anyone at the home in weeks. (FOX Carolina)

A neighbor told FOX Carolina that three men and a woman lived at the house where the bodies were discovered but had not been seen in weeks.

"I didn't even know that was going on, not next to us because they didn't bother nobody when they were staying there," the neighbor said.

CLICK HERE FOR THE FOX NEWS APP

Hulburt was released from the hospital Saturday afternoon, shortly after Galligan was taken into custody. Both appeared before a judge for a bond arraignment Saturday night, where they were both denied, WYFF reported.

Galligan is charged with murder for Bunner's homicide and accessory after the fact for Rhymer's killing, according to jail records online. Hulburt is charged with murder for Rhymer's slaying, accessory after the fact for Bunner's homicide, in addition to unlawful possession of a pistol by a convicted felon for the incident at the towing company.

Autopsies are now scheduled on the bodies of both women to determine a cause of death. Sheriff's officials said they believe there are not anymore suspects in connection with the two killings or any more victims on the property. Deputies added they do not have a motive for the killings of Bunner and Rhymer.

Source: Fox News National

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Swisscom cannot be forced to block illegal film websites: court

FILE PHOTO: Logo of Switzerland's Swisscom telecommunications is seen in Zurich
FILE PHOTO: The logo of Switzerland's Swisscom telecommunications is seen at an office building in Zurich, Switzerland November 22, 2016. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann/File Photo

February 27, 2019

ZURICH (Reuters) – Swiss telecom company Swisscom cannot be forced to block access to foreign internet sites that illegally make films available, the highest Swiss court said on Wednesday, ending a three-year-old copyright case brought by a local film company.

The Swiss Supreme Court dismissed the complaint of the company, Zurich-based Praesens-Film, that owns the Swiss rights for numerous films and had demanded Swisscom deploy technology to block downloads or streaming access.

The decision, which confirms a lower-court ruling, concluded that in order for Swisscom to be forced to block the sites in question, it would have to be a participant in the copyright infringement.

“The activities of Swisscom are limited to offering access to the world-wide internet. The films aren’t offered by Swisscom, rather via third parties based in unknown locations in foreign countries,” the court wrote. “These parties are neither customers of Swisscom, nor do they have any other relationship to the telecom company.”

Swiss legal observers had judged the case important, since it provides other internet providers, of which Swisscom is the nation’s largest, with guidance on their legal obligations in instances where websites offer films in violation of copyrights.

(Reporting by John Miller, editing by John Revill)

Source: OANN

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Top Algerian businessman is arrested at Tunisian border

Algerian media say a top Algerian businessman, Ali Haddad, has been arrested at an Algerian border post as he was apparently trying to go to Tunisia amid political crisis in the country.

Journalists at Haddad's private television channel Dzair News said he was arrested overnight in Oum Tboul, close to the Tunisian border, confirming a report from the daily El Watan.

Haddad, long a backer of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, resigned this week as head of Algeria's Business Forum, apparently trying to distance himself from the unpopular leader whose government has been accused of corruption.

Massive protests started last month to demand that the ailing, 82-year-old president resign. Bouteflika, who has been in power for 20 years, withdrew from running for a new term but cancelled Algeria's April 18 presidential election.

Source: Fox News World

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Democrat Oversight Will be Weaker Than You Think

House Democrats are finding out how difficult it is to provide Congressional oversight.

Axios reported the White House has figured out there’s not much Democrats can do if the administration continues to say no to everything. The administration has blocked several key administration officials from appearing before the House Oversight Committee.

The Washington Post reported the latest example is the administration’s refusal to allow senior adviser Stephen Miller to testify regarding immigration policy.

Meanwhile, Axios noted that any of those who have actually been subpoenaed by the committee could be held in contempt if they do not appear. But it said the subpoenas are difficult to enforce. And the website said recent contempt cases have “fizzled,

Axios also pointed out President Donald Trump and the Trump Organization have filed suit against Oversight Committee chairman Elijah Cummings, D-Md., to block a subpoena for the president’s financial records.

But it said that strategy could have a downside, the website said.

"It totally undercuts the argument that we've been transparent and because there was no criminal wrongdoing that's why we encouraged everyone to cooperate," said a former senior White House official. "Now we look like we've got something to hide and we're not being open and transparent."

Still, the Trump White House is unlikely to face any consequences in the short-term, Axios said.

But one Democratic aide said there are ways of getting past the White House efforts.

“One trend we've been seeing more and more, and a way we can get new information, is from whistleblowers,” the aide said.

Source: NewsMax Politics

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Judge orders mental health tests for accused mosque shooter

A New Zealand judge on Friday ordered that the man accused of killing 50 people at two Christchurch mosques undergo two mental health assessments to determine if he's fit to stand trial.

High Court judge Cameron Mander made the order during a hearing in which 28-year-old Australian Brenton Harrison Tarrant appeared via video link from a small room in a maximum security prison in Auckland.

Tarrant was wearing handcuffs and a gray-colored sweater when he appeared on a large screen inside the Christchurch courtroom, which was packed with family members and victims of the shooting, some in wheelchairs and hospital gowns and still recovering from gunshot wounds.

Tarrant had stubble and close-cropped hair. He showed no emotion during the hearing. At times he looked around the room or cocked his head, seemingly to better hear what was being said.

He spoke only once to confirm to the judge he was seated, although his voice didn't come through because the sound was muted. It wasn't immediately clear if his link had been deliberately or inadvertently muted.

Mander said nothing should be read into his order for the mental health assessments, as it was a normal step in such a case. Lawyers said it could take two or three months to complete.

The courtroom was filled with more than two dozen reporters and about 60 members of the public. A court registrar greeted people in Arabic and English as the hearing got underway. Some of those watching got emotional and wept.

The judge said Tarrant was charged with 50 counts of murder and 39 counts of attempted murder. Police initially filed a single, representative murder charge before filing the additional charges this week.

In the March 15 attacks, 42 people were killed at the Al Noor mosque, seven were killed at the Linwood mosque and one more person died later.

Outside the courtroom, Yama Nabi, whose father died in the attacks, said he felt helpless watching.

"We just have to sit in the court and listen," Nabi said. "What can we do? We can't do nothing. Just leave it to the justice of New Zealand and the prime minister."

Tofazzal Alam, 25, said he was worshipping at the Linwood mosque when the gunman attacked. He felt it was important to attend the hearing because so many of his friends were killed.

Alam said he felt upset seeing Tarrant.

"It seems he don't care what has been done. He has no emotion. He looks all right," Alam said. "I feel sorry. Sorry for myself. Sorry for my friends who have been killed. And for him."

Source: Fox News World

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

April 26, 2019

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

–Field Level Media

Source: OANN

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

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

MARIA BUTINA, ACCUSED RUSSIAN SPY, PLEADS GUILTY TO CONSPIRACY

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

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

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

“Please accept my apologies,” Butina said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Source: Fox News Politics

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CLICK HERE FOR THE FOX NEWS APP

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

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source: Fox News World

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

April 26, 2019

By Tom Lasseter and Shri Navaratnam

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

INTELLIGENCE FAILINGS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“LIKE A SPOILED CHILD”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ONLINE RADICAL

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“HARD TO TAKE”

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

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

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

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

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

Zahran went into hiding once more.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Source: OANN

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