The French Army's 35th Infantry Regiment marches on the Champs-Élysées during the July 2025 Bastille Day parade. (Credit: Ludovic Marin/AFP)
On July 14, gendarme Jean-Pierre Chemaly will march on the Champs-Élysées in tribute to the two French soldiers with the U.N. Interim Force who were killed in southern Lebanon last April. This Franco-Lebanese, a poet in his spare time, is now a squadron leader and heads the Strategy and International Cooperation Division at the Central Office for Combating Crimes Against Humanity and Hate Crimes (OCLCH), an organization that coordinates French investigations into such crimes.It is this office that Chemaly will represent on the national holiday of the country to which he arrived from Lebanon in 2002 to pursue his studies, and it is with both his countries in mind — the one where he was born and his adopted homeland — that he decided last spring to volunteer for the famous military parade, according to an article published by the French...
On July 14, gendarme Jean-Pierre Chemaly will march on the Champs-Élysées in tribute to the two French soldiers with the U.N. Interim Force who were killed in southern Lebanon last April. This Franco-Lebanese, a poet in his spare time, is now a squadron leader and heads the Strategy and International Cooperation Division at the Central Office for Combating Crimes Against Humanity and Hate Crimes (OCLCH), an organization that coordinates French investigations into such crimes.It is this office that Chemaly will represent on the national holiday of the country to which he arrived from Lebanon in 2002 to pursue his studies, and it is with both his countries in mind — the one where he was born and his adopted homeland — that he decided last spring to volunteer for the famous military parade, according to an article published by the...
