French judicial investigation into alleged Israeli war crimes in Lebanon, Digi Mart USA News (Paris, France): Two French judges are investigating suspected war crimes committed by the Israeli army in Lebanon. A Franco-Lebanese man who lost his parents in a bombing in Beirut at the end of 2024 obtained the opening of a judicial investigation in Paris, which his lawyer described as a first.
Six months after filing a complaint as a civil party alongside the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), artist Ali Cherri and his lawyer, Clémence Bectarte, announced on Tuesday, November 3, that two investigating judges had been appointed to the case.
“For nearly two years, I have fought so that the Israeli bombing that killed my parents and five other civilians does not go unpunished,” Cherri said. He called it “an immense step forward for my family and me, although we know the path to justice will still be long and difficult.”
“What happened to my parents is not an isolated case. Beyond my personal story and the memory of my parents, this fight is also for the dignity of all civilian victims.
I hope this investigation will help break the impunity enjoyed by Israeli officials responsible for attacks on civilians in Lebanon and Palestine,” he continued.
According to the complaint, seven civilians, including Cherri’s parents, aged 87 and 77, were killed on November 26, 2024, when a 12-story building in the Noueiri district of central Beirut was bombed. Three floors were destroyed.
The complaint states the strike occurred “just a few hours” before a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hezbollah took effect. The complaint draws in part on detailed research by Amnesty International and Forensic Architecture regarding the strike.
Cherri could not file a homicide complaint because his parents did not hold French citizenship. However, he obtained the opening of an investigation into a “deliberate attack on civilian property, constituting a war crime,” his counsel said.
In September, the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office (Pnat), which handles war crimes, requested that such a judicial investigation be opened against unknown persons, citing “serious and consistent” indications that the acts were committed, according to a source close to the case.
Bectarte said the investigation, which aims to “shed full light” on the bombing, appears to be France’s first judicial inquiry into crimes committed by the Israeli army in Lebanon since the military operation began in October 2023.
Hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah, which had opened a front from Lebanon at the start of the Gaza war, escalated into open war in September 2024. According to Beirut, more than 4,300 people have died in Lebanon.
Other complaints against the Israeli army have also been filed in Paris, including one by another Franco-Lebanese man, Mohamad H., represented by lawyer Emmanuel Daoud, who lost his mother, sister and two nephews in strikes in Tyre in southern Lebanon on the night of April 16–17, 2026. Another complaint was filed by a French entrepreneur born in Lebanon, who accuses the Israeli army of uprooting 600 centuries-old olive trees belonging to his family in a village in southern Lebanon.
Outside Lebanon, the conduct of Israeli forces is the subject of preliminary investigations opened by the Pnat, including for torture and war crimes, following the interception of humanitarian flotillas bound for Gaza in 2025 and 2026. Finally, at the end of 2025, the Pnat asked a Paris investigating judge to investigate war crimes after two French children were killed in an Israeli strike in Gaza in October 2023, though it set aside charges of genocide and crimes against humanity, according to sources close to the case.
