Paris-based Lebanese filmmaker and artist Ali Cherri has formally accused the Israeli military of committing a war crime for a bombing that killed his parents inside their Beirut apartment in 2024.

In the hours before a ceasefire between Hezbollah and Israel was set to take effect on November 26, 2024, Cherri’s parents, Mahmoud Naim Cherri and Nadira Hayek, were killed by an Israeli bomb that struck their 12-story residential building. The strike also killed the couple’s employee, Birki Negesa, and at least four others .

Cherri, represented by the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), filed a war crimes complaint against the attack’s perpetrators in France’s War Crimes Unit yesterday, April 2.

In his complaint, which the FIDH declined to share with Hyperallergic for confidentiality reasons, Cherri and FIDH accused unnamed individuals of the “war crime of intentionally directing an attack against a civilian object.” Under French law, this accusation carries a 15-year prison sentence.

France…