Lebanonwire, March 31, 2003

The Daily Star

Youssef Diab and Samer Wehbe
Daily Star correspondents

The Anti-Terrorism Bureau is questioning a Lebanese man who burst into a British bank in Hamra Saturday and threatened to blow himself up to signal displeasure with the war in Iraq.
Interior Minister Elias Murr said that his ten-minute conversation with Samir Abdel-Karim Berro inside the HSBC bank convinced the 45-year old native of Sharqieh, Nabatieh, to surrender peacefully to the authorities.
In exchange, Murr said, Berro was allowed to make a statement to the media, explaining his motives for the act.
The Anti-Terrorism Bureau is questioning Berro and could issue a formal indictment as early as Monday.
Berro walked into the HSBC branch on Maqdessi Street shortly before 11am Saturday.
Zina Mfarrej, an eyewitness, told The Daily Star that Berro entered and calmly opened his jacket to reveal several sticks of dynamite attached to his torso, while clutching a hand-grenade.
“He said: ‘I am booby-trapped,’ but he said it so calmly that not everyone paid attention to him,” Mfarrej said.
Sources close to the investigation said that several bank employees told police that Berro originally demanded money. However, when an undetermined amount was handed over to him, he put it back on the counter and said that he was going to detonate the explosives, to strike against British interests.
The customers and employees escaped out the bank’s back entrance as Berro locked the front door, the sources said.
Berro managed to retain a single hostage, employee Bassam Qaadan, as police, State Security and army troops were alerted to the incident and rushed to the scene, sealing off the street. A bomb disposal team also arrived at the bank.
Senior Beirut police officials then began negotiating with Berro, who demanded to speak personally with Interior Minister Elias Murr.
Murr, who was at his ministry office around a kilometer away, arrived and entered the building alone.
The minister said that he managed to convince Berro to stand down after ten minutes of discussion, arguing that a violent incident would do nothing to help the people of Iraq, Berro’s announced objective.
Murr said that he had agreed to Berro’s demand to read a prepared statement to the press.
However, when Berro made his appearance outside to waiting television cameras, he read very little from the paper he clutched in his right hand.
Berro said that every Muslim and Arab young man should take revenge for “massacres” taking place in Iraq and Palestine by hitting at American and British interests.
Berro denied that any group had put him up to the act, saying that it was an “individual initiative planned since March 20 (the beginning of the war).”
A number of bystanders, however, appeared doubtful that the incident took place as it was publicly claimed, due to the reports that Berro had originally asked for money, and the ease with which a potentially violent confrontation was defused.
Berro’s wife, Lina Hadid, told The Daily Star that she had no inkling her husband was going to storm the bank, saying that his actions were in total contradiction to his normally “calm” nature.
She said that he headed to Nabatieh and from there to Beirut Saturday morning without her knowledge, while she was visiting her relatives.
She said that her husband
had earlier decided to return to his job at a bakery in Nabatieh, which he had left ten days earlier to protest his daily wage of LL10,000, which was insufficient to support his family of five.
He had worked as a mini-bus driver, but lost this job when diesel-powered engines were banned last summer.
Berro’s relatives insisted Sunday that he was motivated by nationalistic and political reasons for his actions, denying claims that he had stormed the bank for financial reasons.
They said that he had closely followed the American-led war against Iraq
Berro, they said, had also achieved fame last year during a diesel protest ­ he had hoisted one of his children on his shoulders during a demonstration and told the cameras that he was willing to sell him.
After Berro was led away, bystanders gathered around an Iraqi Television crew as it filmed a crowd backing Berro and warning the US, UK and Israel that they would “learn a lesson” in Iraq.

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