Security forces deployed in front of a branch of Lebanese Credit in Hazmieh, during a robbery by two depositors, November 2, 2022. (Credit: Mohammad Yassine/L'Orient Today)
BEIRUT — Four people who broke into a branch of Credit Libanais in Hazmieh, a suburb of Beirut, to demand the return of their deposits at the bank were arrested on at dawn Thursday after spending hours inside the branch with bank employees.
The two depositors, Ibrahim Baydoun and Ali Sahili, their accomplice, Catherine el-Ali, and lawyer and activist, Rami Olleik, are now in custody at the courthouse in Baabda, the state-run National News Agency reported.
The bank employees, who had been sequestered until late in the evening in the branch, were eventually released by security forces.
Olleik, who was on the scene, told L'Orient Today that Baydoun and Sahili have accounts at the bank, but Ali does not. The Depositors' Union said that one of the depositors is a retired soldier.
After Olleik announced Wednesday that the depositors — one of whom was armed — managed to withdraw from the bank the amount of $55,924 out of total deposits of $195,000. It remains unclear if they succeeded later in obtaining more than this sum or if they were allowed to keep the funds obtained.
The Lebanese Depositors' Union held a sit-in on Thursday afternoon in front of the Justice Palace in Baabda in solidarity with those arrested in the holdup, the state-run National News Agency reported.
Yassin Yassin's intervention
The situation seems to have unfolded relatively calmly, after the intervention of Forces of Change MP Yassin Yassin, who went to the bank, according to images circulated by the information platform Spotshot, which was in the bank from the beginning of events along with the Depositors' Union. According to a tweet from the union, Yassin had previously contacted one of the Depositors' Union's lawyers, Fouad Debs, who was present in front of the bank, to inquire about the situation.
On Wednesday evening, the Depositors' Union said that if the security forces deployed on the scene stormed the bank to remove the depositors, they were ready to throw Molotov cocktails and set fire to the establishment.
The Depositors' Union also said in a tweet that the two depositors, who were still in the bank at around 7 p.m., had poured gasoline inside the premises and prepared six Molotov cocktails that they would use "in case they are attacked by the security forces."
Since 2019, as Lebanon has been mired in an unprecedented economic crisis, banks have imposed drastic and illegal restrictions on their customers, limiting withdrawals and transfers. In recent months, the phenomenon of bank holdups by account holders has multiplied, with depositors, some armed and some unarmed, bursting into banks to claim their own savings.
These operations, carried out with varying degrees of success, have forced banks to close temporarily on several occasions before reopening with reinforced security measures and receiving their clients only in small number, and sometimes only by appointment.
