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Gillibrand Says She Wants to ‘Fight Back’ on Trump Hate

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand said Friday she's running for president because she wants to "fight back" against President Donald Trump and how he has "destroyed the moral fabric" of who the United States is as a country.

"I think what the voters want is someone who's authentic, someone who does the right thing, fighting for the right things, someone that wants to serve and put others first," the New York Democrat told MSNBC's "Morning Joe."  "What I've shown in my career I do take on the tough fights."

She said she thinks the Democratic base is looking for bold ideas, but they may not agree with all of hers, including a plan for paying for college through national public service or time in the military.

"It's an expansion of the GI Bill," she said, adding that it is a better solution to making college more accessible and affordable.

Biden has said he'll change his behavior and that is important, said Gillibrand, but there is still no reason why women can't "tell their truth and their value and what's happened to them."

When Biden decides to run, it will be up to him to sort out the issue, said Gillibrand, but for everyone else, it allows women to be heard and valued.

"You can have both conversations," she said. "You just have to be clear about what's what."

Source: NewsMax Politics

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Italy outraged as court finds victim too ugly to be raped

Italy's justice ministry has ordered a preliminary inquiry into an appeals court ruling that overturned a rape verdict on the grounds that the victim was too ugly to be raped.

The ruling has sparked outrage in Italy, including a flash mob Monday outside the Ancona court where protesters shouted "Shame!" and held up signs saying "indignation."

The appeals sentence was handed down in 2017 — by an all-female panel — but the reasons behind it only emerged when Italy's high court annulled it March 5 and ordered a retrial. The Court of Cassation said Wednesday its own reasons for ordering the retrial will be issued next month.

The Justice Ministry says two Peruvian men convicted in the 2015 assault successfully argued the woman was too "masculine" to be a victim.

Source: Fox News World

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Beto O'Rourke takes heat for website's different messages in different languages

Is Beto O’Rourke pandering or is his message lost in translation?

Hours after O'Rourke announced he would run for president, the former Democratic congressman’s website became a focal point for many of his critics. In particular, some pointed out perceived differences between his English and Spanish websites.

The English version has the slogan “Beto for America.” while the Spanish version reads, “Beto para todos," which translates to “Beto for all.”

TRUMP MOCKS BETO O'ROURKE AFTER 2020 ENTRY

Turning Point USA founder and president Charlie Kirk tweeted “Pandering to different communities, Robert?”

Robert is O’Rourke’s legal first name.

“Like he did at his rally, Beto once again standing with non-citizens over Americans,” Campus Reform senior correspondent Eduardo Neret tweeted about the website differences.

Business Insider politics reporter John Haltiwanger tweeted that "'Beto para los Estados Unidos’ would be way too long.”

O’Rourke narrowly lost a senate campaign to Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, in 2018.

Last month the former congressman from El Paso said he would "absolutely" support tearing down existing barriers along the southern border with Mexico.

Conservative critics are also going after O’Rourke for his website not having any information on his policies but promoting their merchandise store.

“Beto website doesn’t offer policy platform — but give money and buy merch!,” conservative commentator and former game show host Chuck Woolery tweeted.

O’Rourke spent Thursday campaigning in Iowa and called for unity among Democrats to defeat President Trump in 2020.

“Ultimately, we all have to get on board with the same person, because it is fundamental to our chances of success that we defeat Donald Trump in 2020,” O’Rourke said.

Source: Fox News Politics

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China’s troubled Anbang to slash registered capital by a third

A general view shows the headquarters of Anbang Insurance Group in Beijing
FILE PHOTO: A general view shows the headquarters of Anbang Insurance Group in Beijing, China, February 23, 2018. REUTERS/Thomas Peter

April 17, 2019

BEIJING/SINGAPORE (Reuters) – China’s Anbang Insurance Group Co said it would reduce its registered capital by nearly one-third, the latest government-directed step of a massive restructuring of the debt-laden conglomerate to curb financial risks.

A state takeover work group, which has seized control of Anbang since February last year, has decided to trim the company’s registered capital to 41.5 billion yuan ($6.21 billion) from 61.9 billion yuan, pending approval from the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, Anbang said in a statement released on Tuesday.

The capital reduction will not influence the company’s operations or cause any major impact on its solvency and financial situations, Anbang said.

The move is the latest step by Beijing to steadily clean up the aftermath of a harsh government crackdown on Anbang – once one of China’s most aggressive dealmakers overseas with a series of major acquisitions that have caught the attention of global regulators and investors.

Anbang’s former chairman, Wu Xiaohui, who masterminded the overseas deal spree including the purchase of New York’s Waldorf Astoria hotel, was sentenced in May 2018 to 18 years imprisonment for fraud and embezzlement. His appeal against the conviction was rejected by a Chinese court in August last year.

Creditors of the company may request Anbang to pay off its debts or provide repayment guarantees within 45 days after the announcement, the company added.

(Reporting by Cheng Leng in BEIJING and Shu Zhang in SINGAPORE; Editing by Gopakumar Warrier)

Source: OANN

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Trump slams EU in aircraft dispute, pushes tariffs on $11 billion of imports

FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Trump participates in Opportunity and Revitalization Council meeting at the White House in Washington
FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting of the White House Opportunity and Revitalization Council in the Cabinet room at the White House in Washington, U.S., April 4, 2019. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/File Photo

April 9, 2019

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump said on Tuesday the United States would impose tariffs on $11 billion of products from the European Union, a day after U.S. trade officials proposed a list of EU products to target as part of an ongoing aircraft dispute.

“The World Trade Organization finds that the European Union subsidies to Airbus has adversely impacted the United States, which will now put Tariffs on $11 Billion of EU products! The EU has taken advantage of the U.S. on trade for many years. It will soon stop!” Trump said in a post on Twitter.

The two sides have been locked in a years-long global trade dispute over mutual claims of illegal aid to plane giants, Netherlands-based Airbus and U.S.-based Boeing, to gain advantage in the world jet business.

The U.S. Trade Representative on Monday announced the planned products targeted in retaliation for European aircraft subsidies, with a final list expected this summer.

Meanwhile, the EU has started preparing to retaliate over Boeing subsidies, an EU official said on Tuesday.

The moves comes as the record subsidy dispute, which has been grinding its way through the WTO for almost 15 years, reaches a climax, with both sides in arbitration to decide the size of any countermeasures.

(Reporting by Susan Heavey; Editing by Mohammad Zargham and Bernadette Baum)

Source: OANN

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Brexit claims another political victim in UK's Theresa May

When Theresa May became prime minister, she had grand designs. Her premiership wouldn't just be about taking Britain out of the European Union, it would be about fighting "the burning injustice" within the country.

But on Wednesday night, broken by Brexit like her predecessor, May effectively conceded that she won't be able to do anything more to battle injustice, empower women, and build a more equal society.

May told lawmakers from her Conservative Party that she will move out of 10 Downing Street as soon as Brexit is delivered, leaving the messy business of building a future relationship with Europe to another leader. That paves the way for what will likely be a fierce succession battle in the Conservative Party.

It is a sour moment for May, who for nearly three years has ploughed an often solitary path to get a Brexit agreement with the EU. Following two hefty defeats for her deal, she's offered her premiership in return for getting the necessary support for her plan.

What she had anticipated as a moment of triumph — actually delivering Brexit — has morphed into some kind of humiliation.

Like David Cameron before her, she will leave Downing Street earlier than planned, a victim of the same deep divisions in her party over Europe.

Hers has been a hapless task. She campaigned to keep Britain inside the EU in the 2016 referendum — albeit quietly — and then took over from Cameron with the mandate to take Britain out.

May set her course early on in the Brexit negotiations when she decided not to seek cross-party cooperation for the type of Brexit she would pursue. She instead spelled out a series of "red lines" that she vowed never to cross that narrowed her options in the tough negotiations with the EU over the divorce.

She decided Britain would leave the European single market, come out of the customs union with Europe, and sever many economic ties that have increasingly bound Britain to continental Europe for decades.

Her single-minded pursuit of these goals did eventually lead to a complex agreement, but when the details were made public, many in Parliament — and many of the most prominent Brexiteers in her own party — rebelled. She was soon stung by a series of high-profile resignations, including her foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, and her Brexit secretary, David Davis.

The pro-Brexit wing of the party said the plan would leave Britain subject to EU rules after it leaves. Pro-EU Conservatives criticized May for ruling out a so-called softer Brexit in which Britain remains in the EU's single market and customs union, perhaps averting a Brexit-fueled economic contraction which the Bank of England has warned could see the British economy shrinking 8 percent in a matter of months.

As the months of negotiations dragged on, she effectively lost the "hard Brexit" faction in her own party, without presenting a "soft Brexit" that would satisfy the Labour Party voters she would need to get the plan approved by Parliament.

The result: stagnation, humiliation, and an early exit.

It's been a jarring end after a promising start. When May came to power in July, 2016, she came through the middle after more prominent figures, including Johnson and then Justice Secretary Michael Gove, fell out acrimoniously.

Any idea that she had a political Midas touch evaporated quickly when she made a fateful decision to call a general election for June, 2017, three years before one was required.

It is revealing that she seemed to make this momentous choice on her own, without much input from her staff, while rambling in the Wales countryside with her husband, Philip, during a break from her duties.

The result was calamitous. May fared so poorly during the campaign that her party lost its majority in Parliament, gravely weakening her authority, and leading directly to the predicament she faces today, when she can only get her plan approved if she gets at least some support from other parties.

A more flexible politician might have decided at that time that a minority position in Parliament would require reaching out to others for something as divisive as a Brexit deal, but May opted to go it alone.

May, 62, is a steely, determined politician who admitted Wednesday night that she doesn't do well in bars or with gossip. Her approach to setback has been to push back and push on, repeating the same talking points — "Brexit means Brexit", for example — almost to the point of self-parody..

Few doubt her fortitude and commitment to an idea of public service instilled in her upbringing as the daughter of an Anglican vicar. Her career has not been tainted by tales of personal greed or corruption, and she has earned praise for soldiering on in an extremely demanding position despite suffering from type 1 diabetes.

It was by all accounts an emotional moment when she told fellow party members Wednesday night she would step down early, despite her clear, stated preference to remain in office.

George Freeman, a former adviser, said she had "tears not far from her eyes" as she admitted she had fallen short.

He said May admitted making "many mistakes" and said she was "only human." Freeman said that behind closed doors May said, "I beg you, colleagues, vote for the withdrawal agreement and I will go."

The crowded room fell silent at that point.

"She is falling on her sword, putting country before party and career, and is asking them to do the same. You could hear a pin drop in that room," Freeman said.

___

Follow AP's full coverage of Brexit at: https://www.apnews.com/Brexit

Source: Fox News World

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Oklahoma woman accused of starving kids, feeding them feces

An Oklahoma mother has been charged with child neglect, accused of starving her children and feeding them dog feces.

The Tulsa World reports that 34-year-old Mary Elizabeth Moore was charged in Delaware County court this month.

The children, aged 5 and 3, are severely malnourished and have been placed on a special diet with nasal feeding tubes. They are in state custody.

An affidavit says the older child told Department of Human Services workers that she ate dog feces. The arresting officer noted the child had parasitic pinworms.

The girl also told investigators that her mother's boyfriend "throws bottles" at her younger sibling.

The affidavit says Moore denied starving her children and feeding them dog feces. Her court-appointed attorney, Lee Griffin, didn't immediately return a phone call Saturday seeking comment.

___

Information from: Tulsa World, http://www.tulsaworld.com

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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