France Opens War Crimes Investigation Into Israeli Airstrike That Killed Artist Ali Cherri's Parents
Amnesty International found that Israeli forces had no evidence of a verifiable military target at the site of the strike.
France's War Crimes Unit has opened an investigation into a deadly Israeli airstrike on French-Lebanese artist and filmmaker Ali Cherri's family home in Barbour, Beirut. The investigation emerges seven months after the artist filed a complaint accusing Israel of war crimes with the office, as the 2024 strike on the residential building killed both of his parents, the domestic worker they employed in the apartment Cherri owned, and at least four other civilians living in the building.
In a February report on Israeli war crimes in Lebanon, Amnesty International stated that Israeli forces had no evidence of a verifiable military target at the site of the strike, and concluded that Israeli forces failed to issue an evacuation warning to civilians before conducting the strike on the 12-story apartment building on November 26, 2024 — less than 12 hours before the temporary ceasefire between Hezbollah and Israel came into effect. Constructed by the Cherri family, the building suffered structural damage localized to the eastern apartments on the 7th to 10th floors. Cherri's late parents, Mahmoud Naim Cherri and Nadira Hayek, as well as domestic worker Birki Negesa, were found in the wreck of the artist's ninth-floor apartment where they resided.
Cherri and his legal representatives at the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) also commissioned the London-based investigative research agency Forensic Architecture to digitally reconstruct the apartment building based on the artist's and neighboring witnesses' documentation of the site post-strike. Both Amnesty International's and Forensic Architecture's findings informed Cherri's complaint accusing Israel of war crimes by “intentionally directing an attack against a civilian object.”
