Federal Bank standoff: Should depositors take the law into their own hands?

These are bad times for Lebanese banks, whose restructuring is deemed unavoidable by the International Monetary Fund and who are finding it increasingly difficult to get common depositors to accept the unilateral restrictions they have imposed on their foreign currency withdrawals since the beginning of the crisis.A week after the arrest of Creditbank Chairman Tarek Khalife, targeted by a shareholder’s complaint, and his release after the Association of Banks in Lebanon decided that banks would go on strike, breaking news came on Thursday of a hostage situation at a Federal Bank branch in the heart of Beirut, by an armed depositor.The hostage taker, Bassam al-Sheikh Hussein, demanded to withdraw his own money, a deposit of $210,000, in a desperate effort to cover the health care expenses of his father, who is reportedly receiving...