The judiciary considers the incursions an “armed robbery” and demands the arrest of the perpetrators
Depositors’ storming of bank branches in Lebanon got out of control, and the infection spread from one region to another. Interior Minister Bassam Mawlawi, to the hypothesis of “politicization” behind the incursions.
It was remarkable that a lieutenant in the army stormed a branch of the Bank of Lebanon and the Diaspora in the town of Chehim in Mount Lebanon, in an attempt to obtain his deposit.
The wave of raids began yesterday, with a depositor entering a bank in the Ghazieh region in the south, where he brandished a plastic weapon in the face of the employees, before receiving $19,200 from his deposit, and surrendering to the security forces. Another branch of “Lebanon and the Diaspora” stormed the New Road in Beirut, a third gunman stormed another branch of the same bank in Hamra, the fourth “Banque du Liban and the Gulf” in Ramlet al-Bayda, the fifth “Bank Libano-Française” in the southern suburbs, and the sixth in the town of Chehim.
While Minister Mawlawi said that the depositors’ movement is “politicised”, and that there are parties that push them to move against the banks, the association that supports them denied this. Lawyer Zina Jaber told Asharq Al-Awsat that “the political authority is conspiring with the banks, and has refrained from developing a fair and transparent plan to distribute losses.”
The Discriminatory Public Prosecutor, Judge Ghassan Oweidat, issued a judicial summons for the security services to prosecute “criminal acts” committed inside bank branches and work to arrest the perpetrators and instigators, considering these acts as “armed robbery” of banks.
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