Why a man behind a Beirut bank holdup became the face of Lebanon’s painful financial collapse

Why a man behind a Beirut bank holdup became the face of Lebanon’s painful financial collapse

BEIRUT: The news that Lebanon’s attorney general on Tuesday released a man who stormed a bank in Beirut last week and took hostages would have scandalized the public in most countries. But Bassam Hussein was no ordinary hostage-taker and Lebanon is no ordinary country. Hussein had reportedly held bank employees and customers at gunpoint on August 11 to demand his own money back. According to the National News Agency of Lebanon, when his request to withdraw part of his frozen savings of $210,000 to cover medical bills for his ailing father was denied, he threatened to torch the bank and kill everyone in it. The attorney general’s decision came after the Federal Bank dropped its lawsuit against Hussein, who emerged as a national hero in a country where banks have subjected their customers to all manner of restrictions, including strict limits on savings withdrawals. Hussein had targeted a bank but his act of desperation was viewed by many of his compatriots as emblematic of a much bigger rot. Lebanon, a nation once described as the “Switzerland of the Middle East,” the darling of foreign investors, artists and intellectuals, has been reduced to a perpetually failing state, with the dubious honor