agreed hostage taker In one of the Lebanese banks to release the hostages and leave the bank after agreeing to give him part of the money his deposit which he was demanding. This comes after he stormed, today, Thursday, a bank on Hamra Street in the Lebanese capital, Beirut, and detained the people inside by force of arms, demanding that he hand over his money.
The correspondent of “Al-Araby Al-Jadeed” in Beirut reported that the security forces took the armed depositor, who left the bank after agreeing to hand him over part of his deposit, estimated at $30,000 out of a total of $210,000.
The Lebanese security services imposed strict measures in the vicinity of the bank, while mediators negotiated with the intruder, who initially agreed to release one of the hostages for health reasons, before reaching the release of all the hostages (their number has not yet been determined) and his departure from the bank.
The head of the Depositors Association, Hassan Mughniyeh, told Al-Araby Al-Jadeed earlier that “the depositor, Bassam Sheikh Hussein, had asked the bank’s management to give him part of his deposit to treat his father, who is in the hospital, but his request was rejected.”
And in a statement to the “Depositors Association” in Lebanon, which is also concerned with defending the rights of depositors whose money is withheld in banks, it stressed that it always insists on adopting the legal path in collecting deposits, and also “holds the political and banking authorities and some judicial authorities responsible for any violence in the street or in public.” Banks, in light of their insistence on favoring the corrupt banking system, and protecting the oppressor and the aggressor against the wronged depositor.
The association considered that “the collection of the right is a legal matter that every applicant can resort to in light of the inaction of some judicial bodies,” declaring its readiness to “defend any applicant who exercises his legal right to collect his right, without endangering the safety of others.”
And this is not the first time that the incident of bank storming by depositors has been recorded, most notably the storming of the depositor Abdullah Al-Saei to a bank in the Jeb Jenin area, western Lebanon, last January, and the detention of “Bank of Beirut and the Arab Countries” employees until they enabled him to Obtaining his financial deposit of 50 thousand dollars.
Since the end of 2019, with the start of the economic crisis in Lebanon, Lebanese banks have continued to withhold depositors’ money, without allowing them to obtain it in cash and in its full value, as it imposed, through its numerous circulars, a set of measures, through which it “choked” large proportions of the value of their real money in US dollars, In addition to the restrictions that it set and allowed them to withdraw specific amounts of their deposits, sometimes in Lebanese pounds, which lost 90% of its value, with a ceiling that cannot be exceeded and within specific deadlines as well.
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