Yoshitha Perera Courtesy The Daily Mirror

Although representatives of the World Muslim League (WML) had announced a donation of USD 5 million to support victims of the Easter Sunday attacks in July 2019, the Catholic Church was not aware of further progress of this initiative, Director of Sethsarana, the charity wing of the catholic church, Father Nishantha Lawrence Ramanayake informed the PCoI probing Easter Sunday attacks on Thursday.

He said that the WML had made this announcement at the National Conference on Peace, Harmony and Coexistence at Nelum Pokuna held in July 2019.

Fr. Ramanayake said the announcement of the funding decision was made before the then president Maithripala Sirisena, former western province governor A. J. M Muzammil and other dignitaries, by WML Secretary General, Dr. Mohommad Bin Abdulkarim Alissa.

The witness said during the conference, former President Maithripala Sirisena had received a symbolic dummy of a cheque mentioning USD 5 million.

After making this announcement before higher officials of the previous government, we haven’t received any update about the funding process. We don’t even know whether the previous government got those funds or not,” Father Ramanayake said.

Testifying before the Commission on Thursday (24) night, the witness said that before announcing the above initiative at the conference, the WML had informed this to Archbishop of Colombo, Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith.