France has opened a war crimes inquiry into the Israeli strike on a Beirut apartment block that killed the parents of the French-Lebanese artist Ali Cherri in November 2024, his lawyer said on 3 November.
Two investigating judges of the crimes against humanity unit of the Paris judicial court will lead the inquiry. The investigation was opened on a charge of launching a deliberate attack against a civilian object, constituting a war crime, the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) said in a statement the same day. Clémence Bectarte, Cherri's lawyer and coordinator of the federation's litigation group, said that to her knowledge it was the first judicial investigation opened anywhere into crimes committed by the Israeli army in Lebanon since October 2023. Israeli attacks in Lebanon have killed 8,956 people and injured 30,664 in that period, according to Lebanese health ministry figures to 30 October 2026.
Cherri's apartment was on the ninth floor of a 12-storey residential building in Beirut's Noueiri neighbourhood, where his parents lived. Israeli forces bombed the building at about 5.30pm local time on 26 November 2024, a few hours before the ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah took effect, according to FIDH. The strike destroyed the apartment and those on the seventh and eighth floors. Seven civilians were killed. Cherri's parents, Mahmoud Naim Cherri and Nadira Hayek, were among them, as was the couple's domestic worker Birki Negesa.
AFP sought comment from the Israeli military and reported no response. FIDH said in April that Israeli authorities had presented repeated strikes on residential areas of Lebanon as attacks on Hezbollah. Cherri told the agency he had brought the case "for the dignity of all civilian victims" and hoped it would help end the impunity of Israeli officials responsible for attacks on civilians in Lebanon and Palestine.
The apartment, not the deaths
Cherri's parents were Lebanese nationals, so French courts have no jurisdiction over their killing, Bectarte said. Cherri could not file a complaint for homicide. His French nationality and his ownership of the ninth-floor apartment gave the Paris unit a basis to investigate the attack on his property. The judges' inquiry is confined to that attack.
Bectarte said in the federation's statement that she hoped the inquiry would throw full light on the bombing. The federation had filed the case with Cherri as a civil party complaint, a procedure in French law that lets a victim bring a case before investigating judges. FIDH announced the filing on 2 April. In a question-and-answer document published with the complaint, the federation said the prosecutors' submissions would set the start and scope of any judicial investigation. The designation of the two judges came seven months later. Their names have not been made public.
Amnesty's findings and the Forensic Architecture reconstruction
The complaint relied on a digital reconstruction of the building by the London-based research agency Forensic Architecture and on research by Amnesty International, FIDH said. Amnesty published its investigation of the strike in February 2026. It found no effective advance warning had been given and no evidence of a military objective in the vicinity. It concluded that the attack must be investigated as a war crime. No court has yet ruled on the strike.
Heba Morayef, Amnesty's regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, said on 3 November that the inquiry was a long-overdue step towards "making a dent in the wall of pervasive impunity" enjoyed by Israeli forces in Lebanon. The organisation called on states to use extraterritorial jurisdiction to bring suspects to trial.
Mohamad Shehab, a cameraman who had filmed the parents' apartment for Forensic Architecture, was killed with his three-year-old daughter in an Israeli strike on their home on 11 March 2026, FIDH said when the complaint was filed. His wife was left in critical condition.
Gaza, the flotillas and the courts
France's national anti-terrorism prosecutor's office (PNAT), which handles war crimes cases, opened a preliminary investigation for torture and war crimes on 5 June 2026, the prosecutors said. The Foreign Ministry had reported the treatment of French nationals detained when Israeli forces intercepted a Gaza-bound flotilla in May. The prosecutors assigned it to the Central Office for Combating Crimes against Humanity, a gendarmerie unit. A second preliminary investigation for torture followed on 1 July after complaints from two participants in an October 2025 flotilla, among them Marie Mesmeur, a La France Insoumise member of the National Assembly. A joint complaint from 26 French participants in flotillas intercepted in 2025 and 2026 has since been lodged with the PNAT. Israeli military and prison authorities have rejected the activists' accusations.
The PNAT's flotilla files are preliminary investigations run by prosecutors. The Cherri inquiry is a judicial investigation led by judges, the stage of French procedure at which suspects can be placed under formal investigation.
Janna and Abderrahim Abudaher, French siblings aged six and nine, were killed when an Israeli strike hit a house in northern Gaza on 24 October 2023. The PNAT has asked a Paris investigating judge to open a war crimes inquiry into their deaths, sources close to the case said on 3 November. The prosecutors ruled out charges of genocide and crimes against humanity, which the children's family had sought in a complaint filed in June 2025.
As a member of the International Criminal Court, France is obliged to arrest Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant if they enter its territory. The court issued warrants for both on 21 November 2024 for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. In December 2025 it rejected Israel's bid to halt its investigation, leaving the warrants in force.
The International Court of Justice ruled on 19 July 2024 that Israel's continued presence in the occupied Palestinian territory is unlawful. It found that Israeli legislation and measures there breach Article 3 of the racial discrimination convention, which prohibits racial segregation and apartheid, without specifying which. A UN commission of inquiry concluded on 16 September 2025 that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza. Amnesty International found in February 2022 that Israel imposes a system of apartheid on Palestinians amounting to a crime against humanity. The Israeli government has rejected each of these findings.
Prosecutors in Rome placed Defence Minister Israel Katz, Chief of Staff Lt Gen Eyal Zamir and senior military, police and prison officials under investigation on 16 October over the treatment of flotilla activists, the prosecutors' office said. The case followed complaints from 50 Italian citizens detained after Global Sumud Flotilla missions in September to October 2025 and April to May 2026. It covers alleged torture, kidnapping, personal injury, robbery and damage. The inquiry had earlier centred on Itamar Ben Gvir, the national security minister. The Israeli government says its naval blockade of Gaza is lawful.
Two more Lebanon complaints
Two further French complaints over Israeli conduct in Lebanon are pending. A French-Lebanese man identified as Mohamad H., represented by the lawyer Emmanuel Daoud, whose mother, sister and two nephews were killed by Israeli strikes on Tyre. A French entrepreneur born in Lebanon accuses the Israeli army of uprooting centuries-old olive trees owned by his family in southern Lebanon.
