Crisis-hit Sri Lanka allows banned Qatar Charity to open country office eying $11 mln

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 Sri Lanka allowed Qatar Charity to open a country office after the Middle Eastern organization pledged $11 million worth of aid to help the crisis hit the island nation, a foreign ministry statement said, two years after the the main charity arm of Qatar Government banned its alleged role in Easter Sunday bombing,

Chief Executive Officer of the Qatar Charity Yousef Al-Kuwari had met Foreign Affairs Minister of Sri Lanka Ali Sabry on Wednesday and had assured “all possible support to Sri Lanka, and stated that 11 million USD worth of projects are identified for Sri Lanka as per the action plan of Qatar Charity of this year”.

Qatar Charity was accused by a top public security minister Sarath Weerasekera under the former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s government to having linking’s with ISIS, who was behind the bloody 2019 Easter Sunday attacks in island.

The charity’s office was also reopened in Colombo on January 11, 2023.

Weerasekara told parliament on January 07 2021 that the ringleader of the Easter Sunday suicide bombers Zaharan Hashim had conducted lectures in an organisation maintained by Sri Lankan lawyer Hejaz Hisbullah.

Related: Crisis-hit Sri Lanka lifts ban on Qatar Charity as it tries to secure fuel supply from Doha

The organisation, named ‘Pearl of Unity’, and its local branch was funded by Qatar Charity which Weerasekara claimed was banned by the United Nations.

Subsequently, the charity’s accounts were frozen and lawyer was arrested arbitrarily and held in custody for 22-months.

However, when the country was hurtled in to a financial crisis in early part of 2022 due to a dollar shortage, Sri Lankan government removed the ban on the charity and reached out to the Islamic nation to secure fuel. 

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