UFL and DOA : Depositors and Free Lebanese to Take the Law into their Own Hands if Judiciary Remains Silent: Protest in front of Beirut Courthouse this Tuesday Morning: Banks are the Head of Corruption and their Owners, Managers and Complicit Judges on Top of Target List!

United for Lebanon against Corruption Alliance and Depositors Outcry Association:

Depositors and Free Lebanese to Take the Law into their Own Hands if Judiciary Remains Silent:
Protest in front of Beirut Courthouse this Tuesday Morning: Banks are the Head of Corruption and their Owners, Managers and Complicit Judges on Top of Target List!

After their earlier campaign against Lebanese banks and their owners titled “Wanted for Justice,” Depositors Outcry Association and the United Alliance have launched a follow-up campaign: “Judges of Shame.” This campaign is the result of evident flagrant blackmail practiced by Lebanese banks against depositors and that lacks any human, moral or legal dimension. The atrocities and hostility towards bank depositors would not have happened without the complicity of a number of judges, who have visibly turned into accomplices in crime through breaking their oath and betraying the Lebanese people in whose name they are supposed to rule and not in the name of the banks.

What's alarming is that said banks have not hesitated to commit a wide array of misdeeds and crimes of all kinds, in a manner that “they unjustly stole part of depositors' lifesavings and are bluntly negotiating over the remaining part”, adding insult to injury. It is a typical behavior of a mafia or a militia without any deterrence or fear of accountability, stretching beyond the practices of war militias as being viewed by many Lebanese. Why not, after banks have bribed their way through and paralized the judiciary. The "judicial revolution" longly awaited by the Lebanese people has not yet arrived, and the matter shall be discussed with President of the Higher Judicial Council Judge Suhail Abboud early on Tuesday, August 16th.

Perhaps the most alarming in all of this is not only “silencing” the judiciary by the banks, but “customizing” it to become a “callous brute” force at the banks disposal for oppressing those depositors demanding to have what's rightfully theirs. Judges, accomplices in crime, have switched allegiance from serving the Lebanese People and ruling in their name to becoming representatives of the oppressing banks and ordering security forces to cover their crimes.

What happened with the legal agent of depositor Bassam Al Sheikh Hussein, Rami Ollaik, is shocking. Al Sheikh Hussein has been arbitrarily detained and on hunger strike since his wrongful detention on the evening of August 11, the moment he discovered the deception that he was subject to by highest state officials: Minister of Interior (Judge) Bassam Al-Mawlawi and (State Public Prosecutor) Ghassan Oweidat and his assistant (judge) Ghassan Al-Khoury. Attorney Ollaik, in practicing his duly defence of Al Sheikh Hussein, was subject in turn to an outrageous verbal and physical assault by Head of Security Forces' Information Division (Brigadier General) Khaled Hammoud on August 11, the night of detaining Al Sheikh Hussein. Hammoud and his assistant Colonel Dory Nakad, who have been behind the (repeated) assault on Ollaik, also and in the company of a dozen police officers kicked the latter out of the interrogation room and out of the division's building, blocking his defense of Al Sheikh Hussein after he protested his unlawful detention. This all took place under deafening and appalling silence of the Beirut Bar Association whose Ollaik a member of and the Higher Judicial Council.

The power of “the mafia and militia” of banks has not been limited to subjugating the judiciary and the police forces only, but it has also stretched to taming a significant number of media outlets that have led a propounding negative propaganda of smear campaigns against everyone who raises their voice in demand of their rights. Ollaik, in addition to being subject to multiple verbal and physical assaults over the past year for representing the “marginalized,” was also oppressed through the pressure of disbarment and misinformation aimed at falsely discrediting him.

Lastly and while Al Sheikh Hussein who announced a hunger strike is kept under false imprisonment, the “judges and officers of shame” together with banks mafia and militia heads are wasting depositors' moneys on their private jets and lavish expenditures. Association of Lebanese Banks and its president, Salim Sfeir, as well as the management of Federal Bank of Lebanon and the director of the Hamra branch, Hassan Halaweh, bear responsibility for any harm that may happen to the “captive” Bassam Al Sheikh Hussein, according to his family. The banks' violations and judiciary's silence have caused Al Sheikh Hussein, 42, to take the law into his own hands in accordance with Article 184 of the Lebanese Penal Code, breaking into the bank and demanding his savings solely for the medical treatment of his old father.

Lebanese bank depositors and supportive free Lebanese are preparing for a solidarity protest in front of the Beirut Justice Palace this Tuesday, August 16, starting at 9 am.