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Trump Taking ‘Wait-and-See Approach’ on Border

President Donald Trump says he is taking a wait-and-see approach when it comes to his threat to close the southern border as soon as this week.

Trump is telling reporters as he meets with NATO's secretary general that he's pleased with steps that Mexico has taken in recent days and that, "We're going to see what happens."

But he says that he's "ready to close it" if he has to and will do so if Mexico stops helping or if he fails to reach a deal with Congress to overhaul the nation's immigration laws."

Trump is bemoaning current regulations and says: "We're going to have a strong border or we're going to have a closed border."

Source: NewsMax Politics

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Fed’s Kashkari says rate cut now would be ‘premature’

President of the Federal Reserve Bank on Minneapolis Neel Kashkari speaks during an interview in New York
President of the Federal Reserve Bank on Minneapolis Neel Kashkari speaks during an interview in New York, U.S., March 29, 2019. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton

March 29, 2019

By Ann Saphir and Trevor Hunnicutt

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The Federal Reserve should not bow to market pressure by advocating a “premature” rate cut until it becomes clear whether recent weakness in the U.S. economy is a blip or a harbinger of danger down the road, Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank President Neel Kashkari told Reuters on Friday.

“I, for one, want to see more evidence that the economy is actually slowing before we would then go and cut rates; I think there’s a real cost to the Federal Reserve chasing noisy data because we can add to uncertainty,” Kashkari said in an interview. “There’s a cost to these pivots.”

It will take “a few more months” to determine whether the slowdown is lasting, he said.

Though the probability of recession is higher than it was nine months ago, it still is not the most likely outcome in his view. And while it is possible that the Fed has already raised rates too high and will need to backtrack, as markets are betting, Kashkari said he needs more time to know for sure.

“I don’t know if the recent slowdown in data is a blip or if it’s a real economic trend,” he said. “If we reach the conclusion that the economy is really slowing, then I think it would be appropriate to consider cutting interest rates.”

Kashkari’s remarks are notable not because they are measured – several other Fed policymakers have also recently downplayed the chance of recession despite a signal from bond markets that one is coming – but because he has been one of the Fed’s most adamant doves almost from the moment he joined in 2016.

The Fed last week confirmed that rate hikes are on hold for now after four increases in its policy rate in 2018, citing an economic slowdown. Markets immediately reacted by betting that the Fed’s next move would likely be a cut and investors also pushed down short-term bond yields to a level that in past years has presaged a recession. But Kashkari said he wants to wait for more evidence.

“Part of what the bond market is doing is trying to psychoanalyze the Fed,” he said.

“If they’re looking at us and then we’re looking at them very quickly we can start chasing our tail.”

(Reporting by Ann Saphir and Trevor Hunnicutt; Editing by Andrea Ricci)

Source: OANN

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China eyes U.S. poultry, pork imports in trade talks: sources

Pigs nearing market weight stand in pens at Duncan Farms in Polo
FILE PHOTO: Pigs nearing market weight stand in pens at Duncan Farms in Polo, Illinois, U.S. April 9, 2018. REUTERS/Daniel Acker

April 16, 2019

By Chris Prentice and Tom Polansek

NEW YORK/CHICAGO (Reuters) – China would likely lift a ban on U.S. poultry as part of a trade deal and may buy more pork to meet a growing supply deficit, but it is not willing to allow a prohibited growth drug used in roughly half the U.S. hog herd, two sources with knowledge of the negotiations said.

The United States and China are trying to hammer out a deal to end a months-long trade war that has cost the world’s two largest economies billions and roiled global financial markets and supply chains.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration is pressing Beijing to address concerns over Chinese practices on intellectual property rights, forced technology transfer and industrial subsidies.

Washington is also pushing for greater market access for agricultural products by seeking to reduce tariffs, lift bans and overhaul regulatory processes. The United States has asked Beijing to lift its bans on the drug ractopamine, which some U.S. pork producers use to boost hog growth, and on U.S. poultry, said two sources briefed on the discussions who spoke on condition of anonymity.

China’s negotiators have resisted lifting the ractopamine restriction even though Beijing may boost imports of U.S. pork as its own hog herd is devastated by disease, the sources said.

Huge losses in China’s hog herd due to African swine fever have left the world’s largest pork market facing a protein deficit, stoking hopes among U.S. pork and poultry producers.

“I think that China will do anything possible to make it easier for them to import protein,” said Bob Brown, an independent U.S. livestock market analyst. “This is such a gigantic thing,” he said of African swine fever.

Up to 200 million pigs could be culled or die from infections as the disease spreads through China, reducing the nation’s pork output by 30 percent from 2019, according to Rabobank.

Iowa State University agricultural economist Dermot Hayes said he expects China will import about 4 million to 6 million tonnes of pork in 2020, following losses in Chinese herds. The amount imported from the United States will depend on a trade deal, because Beijing maintains tariffs on shipments of American pork and has alternative suppliers, he said.

The Chinese poultry market also “has tremendous potential” for U.S. producers, said Jim Sumner, president of the USA Poultry and Egg Export Council in Stone Mountain, Georgia, valuing it at $500 million.

“With China’s situation with African swine fever, they’re going to have a real protein shortage in the near future,” he said.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture projects China’s total chicken imports will surge 68 percent this year to 575,000 tonnes, not including popular chicken feet, as African swine fever spurs consumers to turn to proteins other than pork. The disease is fatal to pigs but not harmful to humans.

Beijing has banned all U.S. poultry and eggs since January 2015 due to an avian influenza outbreak, which has been over for years. That caused imports to tank after the United States shipped $390 million worth of poultry and products to China in 2014. The following year, shipments were less than a fifth of that, at $74 million.

China lifted a similar restriction on poultry from France last month, and last year dropped duties on U.S. white-feathered broiler chickens. A total lifting of the ban would reopen the gates for U.S. poultry to compete in the world’s largest, and best-paying, market for products like chicken feet, and benefit companies such as Sanderson Farms Inc..

While it looks increasingly likely China may lift its ban on U.S. poultry, Beijing is seeking a “two-way street” and would want to be able to export some poultry products to the United States as well, two sources said.

China’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs did not respond to a request for comment. A spokeswoman for the U.S. Trade Representative’s office declined to comment.

A U.S. meat exporter said officials from the USTR indicated that China will not drop its ban on ractopamine, though trade talks are still ongoing.

Chinese authorities blocked the use of ractopamine in livestock in 2002. They say it can cause health problems in people and is too similar to clenbuterol, an illegal additive in pig feed used to keep meat lean. The European Union also prohibits ractopamine, although the United States and other countries say it is safe.

Keeping the ban on ractopamine could benefit companies such as Smithfield Foods, a subsidiary of Hong Kong-listed WH Group Ltd that already raises most of its hogs without the drug. WH Group declined to comment. Smithfield Foods did not respond to request for comment.

Other U.S. pork producers that use the drug could benefit if China dropped its ban.

“It’s unfortunate news,” Christine McCracken, senior protein analyst with Rabobank in New York, said of the likely continuance of the ractopamine ban.

(Reporting by Chris Prentice in Washington and Tom Polansek in Chicago; Additional reporting by Dominique Patton in Beijing; Editing by Caroline Stauffer and Dan Grebler)

Source: OANN

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Trump Rails Against 'SNL,' Again, And Suggests 'Retribution' for NBC

Trump Rails Against 'SNL,' Again, And Suggests 'Retribution' for NBC

President Trump once again took aim at "Saturday Night Live," suggesting that there should be a price to pay by TV networks for delivering such scathing satire.

"Nothing funny about tired Saturday Night Live on Fake News NBC! Question is, how do the Networks get away with these total Republican hit jobs without retribution? Likewise for many other shows? Very unfair and should be looked into. This is the real Collusion!" Trump wrote on Sunday morning.

On Saturday's show, "SNL" opened with a sketch featuring Alec Baldwin as Trump and mocking the president's declaration of a national emergency to secure funding for a wall along the southern border. The skit skewered Trump's Rose Garden announcement on Friday as a meandering series of pronouncements.

"We need wall, because wall works. Wall makes safe. You don't have to be smart to understand that, and in fact it's even easier to understand if you're not that smart."

This was the seventh tweet that Trump has sent out blasting "Saturday Night Live" since he hosted the show in November 2015 in the midst of his presidential campaign. But he's lately been suggesting that some sort of legal action should be taken against NBC.

"A REAL scandal is the one sided coverage, hour by hour, of networks like NBC & Democrat spin machines like Saturday Night Live. It is all nothing less than unfair news coverage and Dem commercials. Should be tested in courts, can't be legal? Only defame & belittle! Collusion?" he wrote on Dec. 16.

Some presidents have taken "Saturday Night Live" with good humor. President George H.W. Bush invited Dana Carvey to the White House after Carvey impersonated him on the show during the 1992 presidential campaign. In 1976, Gerald R. Ford all but embraced Chevy Chase's portrayal of him as a klutz by inviting the comedian to the White House and even doing a cameo on "SNL."

Source: NewsMax Politics

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Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign workers unionize, team says

Sen. Bernie Sanders’ campaign team on Friday announced that some of their employees have unionized, a move they labeled as a historic feat.

The Democratic White House contender’s team in a news release said the move will make them “the first major party presidential campaign in history to have a unionized workforce.”

BERNIE SANDERS HITS HEAD ON SHOWER DOOR, RECEIVES STITCHES, CAMPAIGN SAYS

Most of Bernie 2020’s “bargaining unit employees” recently selected the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 400 to be their “exclusive bargaining representative,” the campaign said.

“The campaign recognized a card check system to indicate support for the union and did not require an election,” the news release said.

RNC ASSAILS BERNIE SANDERS OVER REPORT HE CALLED FOR NATIONALIZATION OF MAJOR US INDUSTRIES IN 1970S

Campaign Manager Faiz Shakir hailed the lawmaker as being “the most pro-union candidate” among those in the ever-widening Democratic pool. Shakir added they’re “honored that his campaign will be the first to have a unionized workforce.”

United Food and Commercial Workers Local 400 verified the news to The Associated Press, with President Mark P. Federici saying he expects the decision will mean that Sanders' campaign workers have pay parity and transparency, without gender bias and harassment.

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Sanders, I-Vt., announced last month that he would be making another bid for the White House, after losing the Democratic nomination in 2016 to Hillary Clinton.

Fox News’ Andrew Fone and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source: Fox News Politics

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Sudan leader’s iron grip finally slips amid protests

He was the world's only sitting head of state wanted for genocide. He lost a third of his country, a quarter of its population and most of its oil resources when South Sudan broke away.

Yet Sudan's Omar al-Bashir, who came to power in a military coup in 1989, was able to keep his grip on power for 30 years in what proved to be one of Sudan's most brutal chapters.

It was not until months of popular protests erupted against him that the 75-year-old president finally lost the support of his military commanders, who arrested and deposed him Thursday.

In announcing al-Bashir's overthrow, his defense minister, Gen. Awad Mohammed Ibn Ouf, described him all too accurately as "stubborn and persistent."

Famous for breaking out in dance and jabbing his trademark cane in the air, al-Bashir exuded defiance even at the most critical moments of his political career.

When he was indicted by the International Criminal Court in 2009 on charges of committing crimes in Darfur, he responded by expelling a dozen aid groups working in the war-plagued region, where up to 300,000 people were killed and 2.7 million driven from their homes by militias he backed. Then, he traveled there, appearing at government-organized rallies brimming with supporters.

"Tell them all, the ICC prosecutor, the members of the court and everyone who supports this court that they are under my shoe," al-Bashir said, brandishing a sword. The army then mobilized troops to confront any threat to him and renewed its allegiance to him.

Since independence in 1956, Sudan has bounced between tumultuous party politics and military rule. But al-Bashir successfully presented himself as the leader of a new wave of "political Islam," based on an alliance between Islamists and the military.

As a young officer, al-Bashir was groomed and trusted by the Islamist movement, which played a key role in propping him up for years.

After leading his coup with a few fellow officers, al-Bashir declared the imposition of Islamic Sharia law. The new rules included stoning and amputations as punishments. Also, Islamic judges were sent to the country's mainly animist, Christian south, fueling the civil war that was already going on for years.

One of his allies, religious scholar Hassan Turabi, invited Osama bin Laden to Sudan in 1991, prompting the U.S. to place Sudan on its list of states sponsoring terrorism. The U.S. later imposed sanctions on the government and carried out an airstrike on a factory in Sudan it said was used by al-Qaida to produce nerve gas.

Al-Bashir disputed the accusations and blamed hostile neighbors. He called bin Laden a businessman undertaking a major infrastructure project in Sudan. (After five years, bin Laden was expelled from Sudan under pressure from the U.S.)

In addition to relying on Islamist ideology, Al-Bashir used the country's oil wealth to boost a class of businessmen faithful to him and created loyal militias to protect his rule, employing them to crack down on rebels in the country's western Darfur region. The resulting atrocities led to the charges of genocide.

The indictment increased his international isolation but didn't prevent him from traveling. The strongman even attended last year's World Cup soccer final in Moscow, taking his place among other heads of state in luxury seating at the stadium. And he paid a surprise visit last December to Damascus, Syria, which has been shunned by other Arab countries because of the civil war there.

After years of promising to hold his country together amid disputes with the oil-rich south, al-Bashir quickly accepted the referendum results in 2010 that created one of the world's newest countries, South Sudan. While criticized, al-Bashir hoped to get concessions from the West in return.

Al-Bashir governed with an iron fist while also zigzagging strategically to divide his opponents. He often shuffled his aides, once firing his presidential adviser after accusing him of plotting a coup in 2012, only to bring him back as intelligence chief last year to deal with growing unrest.

When economic hardship deepened after the split with South Sudan, protests inspired by the Arab Spring uprisings broke out in the country as early as 2012. Al-Bashir at first ridiculed the protests, saying: "They talk of an Arab Spring. Let me tell them that in Sudan we have a hot summer, a burning hot summer that burns its enemies."

Then, when the protests persisted, he promised not to stand for re-election, only to renege and run in 2015.

"He will be remembered as someone who lied his way in power. He lied a lot," said Wasil Taha, a Sudanese editor of an English-language newspaper who emigrated to the U.S.

This time, the protests, combined with the economic downturn, proved to be Al-Bashir's undoing. As the pressure mounted, the genocide charges and the threat of being handed over to the International Criminal Court seemed to limit his options.

A prominent exiled Sudanese cartoonist drew a caricature of al-Bashir sitting on a throne, with one of its broken legs replaced by a brick. The caption: "I will get down, but just tell me where to get down."

_____

El Deeb covered Sudan from 2008 to 2010. Mike Corder in Amsterdam contributed to this report.

Source: Fox News World

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Congress Must Act to End Crisis on Our Border

Congress Must Act to End Crisis on Our Border

Joel Martinez/The Monitor via AP

This week, Mayor Douglas Nicholls of Yuma, Arizona, declared a state of emergency as thousands of illegal immigrants poured into the city and pushed it to its breaking point. As the mayor warned, the sudden influx of people is above our capacity as a community to sustain.

Read Full Article »

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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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