Artist files war crime case in Paris over Israeli strike that killed parents in Lebanon

A Lebanese-French artist has filed a legal complaint in a Paris court about an Israeli bombing of his family home in Lebanon that killed his parents and a domestic worker, claiming the attack could constitute a war crime.The artist Ali Cherri. Photograph: Photographic department/National Gallery, LondonThe suit, filed with the French war crimes unit on Tuesday, is a rare instance of an individual pursuing war crimes charges for an Israeli bombing. It is also the first time a French court has taken a case over Israel’s bombing of Lebanon.Israel has been accused of numerous war crimes for targeting civilians, public infrastructure and medics, and for forced displacement in Lebanon and Gaza, but no one in the country has been held legally accountable. It has also been accused of committing genocide in Gaza.Ali Cherri, the artist who filed the suit, said: “Our demand is that an investigation is opened so that we know for a fact what happened, to name this attack as a war crime against civilians, and hopefully being able to name the people responsible for this.”Cherri’s family home, which his grandparents had built decades ago in central Beirut, was bombed by Israel a few hours before a ceasefire was established between Hezbollah and Israel on 26 November 2024. During the 13-month war Israeli strikes killed about 4,000 people in Lebanon.Documentation from a week after the incident. Left: damage to the rear of the Cherri building. Right: fire damage to the front. Composite: Forensic ArchitectureThere was no evacuation warning before the strike, and the bombing damaged three floors of the apartment building. Cherri’s parents, Mahmoud Naib Cherri, 86, and Nadira Hayek, 76, and their employee Birki Negesa were killed, along with four other civilians.“We though that they were out of danger,” Cherri said. “We never thought we were living somewhere where anything like this could happen.“My parents did all they could to protect us. They didn’t finish school, but they did everything they could for us to have a better life. I’m proud to have them as parents.”In February, Amnesty International conducted an investigation into the strike. It concluded there had been no evidence of a military target at the time of the attack and that the strike should be investigated as a war crime.Forensic Architecture, a UK-based investigative rights group that helped prepare the legal complaint, created a 3D model of the struck building and identified the munition used in the strike as a GBU-39. It is a 250lb (115kg) guided bomb produced by the US and commonly used by Israel in attacks on Gaza and Lebanon.The group said the analysis of the strike and the use of a guided munition highlighted the targeted nature of the attack and demonstrated the Israeli army’s responsibility for it.A digital model of the north and east sides of the Cherri building after the attack. Illustration: Forensic ArchitectureAmnesty International said the civil complaint in France was a “rare opportunity” to hold Israel to account.Heba Morayef, Amnesty International’s regional director for the Middle East and north Africa, said: “Amidst a longstanding pattern of serious violations of international humanitarian law by Israeli forces in Lebanon, and as Israel once again steps up its attacks, if war crimes unit prosecutors open an investigation into this complaint, this would offer a rare opportunity to examine Israel’s actions in a European court given the general impunity it usually enjoys.”To Cherri, the case was also of importance because of renewed fighting between Israel and Lebanon, where he sees similar cases to the bombing of his parents’ home being repeated.On 2 March, Hezbollah launched rockets at Israel. Israel then launched an aerial campaign and ground invasion of Lebanon, which has killed 1,318 people so far.Mohammed Shehab, a photographer who worked with Forensic Architecture to film and model the Cherri family’s apartment building, was killed in an Israeli strike on his home on 11 March. The strike also killed his three-month-old daughter and critically injured his wife, in what Forensic Architecture called “circumstances similar” to the strike on the Cherri home.Cherri said that while he was not optimistic that anyone in Israel would be held criminally liable for the strike on his family’s building, he still felt that filing the case was important.“Either you accept that you’re a victim and accept your fate, like unfortunately a lot of Lebanese have to do. Or you take it as a responsibility for all the other people who can’t go through this legal process,” he said.