Unidentified armed people, believed to be the guards of Blom Bank's chairman Saad Azhari, reportedly fired live bullets toward protesters on Sep. 15, 2022. (Credit: Mohammad Yassin/OLJ)
BEIRUT — Activists on Wednesday evening protested in front of Blom Bank's chairman Saad Azhari's residence in Beirut, after the bank refused to drop charges against two activists that accompanied a female depositor who held bank employees at gunpoint earlier in the day and retrieved a sum of her savings. Unidentified armed people, believed to be Azhari's guards, reportedly fired live bullets toward the protesters.
Activist Roy Boukhari, who joined the protesters below Azhari's house on Wednesday, told L'Orient Today that unidentified armed individuals thought to be Azhari's guards, fired live bullets toward them while they protested their friends' detention and demanded their immediate release. Boukhari added that, following the assault, the protesters headed to Blom Bank in Sodeco, Beirut, and staged a sit-in ramping up pressure to release the two activists.
Reacting to these accusations, Blom Bank's press office said in a statement sent to L'Orient-Le Jour that Azhari "does not have bodyguards (neither armed nor unarmed)."
Two hostage-takings took place almost simultaneously in Lebanon on Wednesday, the first at a Blom Bank branch in Sodeco, Beirut, and the second at a bank in Aley, southeast of the capital.
In both incidents, depositors took the banks hostage with the aim of accessing funds in their own accounts, upon which the banks have imposed illegal restrictions since 2019.
In Sodeco's Blom Bank branch Wednesday morning, Sali Hafez, filmed herself demanding her own money "for her sister who has cancer and is dying in the hospital." In an interview with a local media outlet after the event, Hafez said she recovered about $13,000 of the $20,000 her family had deposited in the bank. The cost of her sister's care was $50,000, she said, adding that the weapon she used during the incident was fake.
After obtaining her funds in less than an hour, Hafez and her accomplices managed to escape through a window before the arrival of security forces.
Activist and Hafez's lawyer Rami Ollaik told L'Orient Today that the two activists remain in custody Thursday morning, adding that old charges against at least one of them — other than the BLOM bank hostage-taking — have resurfaced. Ollaik, who is not representing the two activists, declined to give out further information on the matter.
Ollaik — who also founded the Mouttahidoun (United) Alliance to defend Lebanese depositors against the banks — confirmed in a voice message to L'Orient-Le Jour on Wednesday that several coordinated actions were carried against banking institutions, and that more will follow. Wednesday's events were reportedly coordinated by bank customers and the Association of Depositors in Lebanon.
Additional reporting by Mohammad Yassin