Army soldiers and security forces stand guard outside a"Federal Bank" branch in Beirut on Aug. 11, 2022.BEIRUT — A Lebanese man with a shotgun took up to 10 employees and customers hostage at a Beirut bank Thursday and threatened to set himself on fire with gasoline unless he was allowed to withdraw some of his trapped savings to pay his father’s medical bills.
A bank customer who fled the building told local media that the gunman was demanding to withdraw $2,000 to pay his hospitalized father’s medical bills. Local media reported that he had about $200,000 stuck in the bank. Lebanese army soldiers, police officers from the country’s Internal Security Forces and intelligence agents surrounded the area.
“What led us to this situation is the state’s failure to resolve this economic crisis and the banks’ and Central Bank’s actions, where people can only retrieve some of their own money as if it’s a weekly allowance,” said Dina Abou Zor, a lawyer with the advocacy group Depositors’ Union who was among the protesters. “And this has led to people taking matters into their own hands.”
From what I’ve heard from Lebanese friends, his actions seem warranted.
How to respond in a way that makes sense to westerners? Desperate times call for desperate measures.