Sri Lanka police discover suspected training camp for Islamist militants

[Eugene]

Source: Reuters

WORLD NEWS MAY 5, 2019 / 11:37 AM / UPDATED 17 MINUTES AGO

Sri Lanka police discover suspected training camp for Islamist militants

Alexandra Ulmer, Omar Rajarathnam
2 MIN READ

KATTANKUDY (Reuters) - Sri Lankan police on Sunday discovered a 10-acre camp in the eastern town of Kattankudy, where Islamist militants linked to the deadly Easter attacks are believed to have practiced shooting and bombmaking.

The walled terrain is nestled in a poor residential area on the outskirts of the home town of Zahran Hashim, who is believed to have been a key player in plotting the April 21 attacks. Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the church and hotel bombings that killed more than 250 people.

The narrow, sandy plot is dotted with a cinderblock four-storey watchtower, as well as mango trees, a chicken coop and a goat shed.

“They wanted to show this place was normal. If someone comes to see, it looks like a farm. But what they were doing is terrorism,” said a senior police officer in the Batticaloa area, asking to remain anonymous because he was not authorized to speak to media.

-snip-

Read more: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-sri-lanka-blasts-camp/sri-lanka-police-discover-suspected-training-camp-for-islamist-militants-idUSKCN1SB0HU

[at140]

1. However the suicide terrorists were from rich families

and Osama Ben Ladin was from a very rich family.
And the leader of 911 terrorist was a graduate engineer working in Germany.
But the religious ideology is paramount in the heads of terrorists.

[friendly_iconoclast]

2. Ruthless would-be leaders of mass movements are rarely poor and/or uneducated

They tend to use the poors as cannon fodder...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_life_of_Vladimir_Lenin

Lenin's father, Ilya Nikolayevich Ulyanov, was the fourth child of impoverished tailor Nikolai Vassilievich Ulyanov (born a serf father); and a far younger woman named Anna Alexeevna Smirnova, who lived in Astrakhan. Ilya was of partly Kalmyk descent. Ilya escaped poverty by studying physics and mathematics at the Kazan State University, before teaching at the Penza Institute for the Nobility from 1854.Introduced to Maria Alexandrovna Blank, they married in the summer of 1863. From a relatively prosperous background, Maria was the daughter of a Russian Jewish physician, Alexander Dmitrievich Blank, and his German-Swedish wife, Anna Ivanovna Grosschopf, who was the daughter of a wealthy Lutheran family from Germany. Alexander Blank was the son of Moishe Blank, a Jewish merchant from Volhynia, and his Swedish wife Anna Ostedt

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_life_of_Joseph_Stalin

...Keke was determined to send her son to school, something that none of the family had previously achieved. In late 1888, when Stalin was ten, he enrolled at the Gori Church School...He excelled academically, and also displayed talent in painting and drama classes...

He was also known to be a ferocious autodidact with an enormous library, and had worked as a meteorologist as a youth.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_life_of_Mao_Zedong

Born in Shaoshanchong, Shaoshan in Hunan province, Mao grew up as the son of Mao Yichang, a wealthy farmer and landowner.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shining_Path#Origins

The Shining Path was founded in 1969 by Abimael Guzmán, a former university philosophy professor (his followers referred to him by his nom de guerre which was Presidente Gonzalo), and a group of 11 others.His teachings created the foundation of its militant Maoist doctrine. It was an offshoot of the Communist Party of Peru — Bandera Roja (red flag), which in turn split from the original Peruvian Communist Party, a derivation of the Peruvian Socialist Party founded by José Carlos Mariátegui in 1928. The Shining Path first established a foothold at San Cristóbal of Huamanga University, in Ayacucho, where Guzmán taught philosophy. The university had recently reopened after being closed for about half a century,and many students of the newly educated class adopted the Shining Path's radical ideology.[citation needed] Between 1973 and 1975, Shining Path members gained control of the student councils in the Universities of Huancayo and La Cantuta, and they also developed a significant presence at the National University of Engineering in Lima and the National University of San Marcos.