BEKAA VALLEY — On the run from authorities after forcing a bank to release her family savings at gunpoint to treat her cancer\u002Dstricken sister, 28\u002Dyear\u002Dold…
“We are in the country of mafias. If you are not a wolf, the wolves will eat you,” she told Reuters, standing on a dirt track somewhere in Lebanon’s rugged eastern Bekaa valley where she has since been in hiding.Sign up to receive daily headline news from Ottawa Citizen, a division of Postmedia Network Inc.By clicking on the sign up button you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc.
Hafiz was the first of at least seven savers who held up banks last week, prompting banks to shut their doors citing security concerns, and call for security support from the government. “Maybe they saw me as a hero because I was the first woman who does this in a patriarchal society where a woman’s voice is not supposed to be heard,” Hafiz said, adding she had not intended to harm anyone but was tired of government inaction.Article contentWhen her sister began losing hope she would be able to afford costly treatment to help regain mobility and speech impaired by brain cancer, and the bank declined to provide the savings, Hafiz said she decided to act.
Before her raid, she watched popular Egyptian black comedy Irhab w Kabab – or “Terrorist and Kabab” – in which a man frustrated with government corruption holds up a state building and demands kebabs for the hostages due to the high price of meat.Article content A police officer who knocked on her door “must have been scared I would give birth in front of him. I went downstairs in front of them all, like 60 or 70 people… they were wishing me luck with the birth. It was… like the movies,” she said, after they failed to recognize her.Two of Hafiz’s close friends with her at the bank hold up were detained after the incident over charges of threatening bank employees and holding them against their will, and ordered released on bail on Wednesday.
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