Impact report

On 1 December 2018, on the sidelines of a Yellow Vests protest in Marseille, Zineb Redouane, aged 80, was fatally wounded in the face by a tear gas grenade fired from a Cougar launcher while she stood at the window of her flat. The judicial investigation, entrusted to the IGPN, was quickly marred by serious failings: misplaced evidence, no identification of the shooter, and a refusal to investigate the circumstances of the shot.

Carried out within Forensic Architecture and published with Disclose, Index’s investigation drew on all available images – amateur videos, press photographs, CCTV footage – to reconstruct precisely the trajectory and timing of the shot. Where the official expert report had cleared the shooter, Index’s analysis established the opposite: the way the shot was fired was both against the rules and dangerous.

The findings had an immediate effect on the proceedings. In the summer of 2021, the IGPN cited Index’s investigation in its report formally identifying the shooter – a CRS riot police officer – and recommending that a disciplinary board be convened. The officer was placed under formal investigation for involuntary manslaughter on 28 November 2024, six years after the events: a result directly linked to the sustained pressure of a public counter-expertise.

Together with the investigation into the death of Adama Traoré carried out the same year, the reconstruction of the shot that killed Zineb Redouane is one of the two founding investigations that led to Index being set up as an independent organisation based in France. It shows that independent digital investigation can reopen stalled cases and push the courts to act where they had previously shied away from doing so.

On 22 February 2020, in Brunoy, Adnane Nassih, aged 19, lost an eye to a rubber projectile fired from an LBD 40 launcher during a police operation in the Hautes-Mardelles neighbourhood. The judicial investigation initially rested on the account of the officer involved, who said he had fired in response to an attack. The available footage, barely analysed, told an entirely different story.

Index’s investigation, published in partnership with Libération in May 2021, examined all of the video sequences documenting the minutes leading up to the shot. The reconstruction established that at the moment the officer fired, Adnane Nassih was moving away from him with his back turned. Nothing justified the use of the weapon. The rules governing use of the LBD – which require proportionality and immediate necessity – were not followed.

Published on the front page of a national daily, the investigation achieved unprecedented visibility for a case of maiming by the police. It was a mark of editorial recognition for Index, and opened the door to further collaborations with leading newspapers.

In January 2025, the officer was ordered to stand trial before the criminal court (cour criminelle) for “assault by a person vested with public authority resulting in permanent disability” – a crime carrying up to fifteen years in prison. It is rare for an LBD shot to reach a criminal court, and this shows that video counter-expertise can shape how the facts are classified in law – not just whether they are recognised as having happened.

The case of Adnane Nassih is part of a series of Index investigations into crowd-control weapons (Rodrigues, Lognonne, Pontonnier), forming a coherent body of work on a French approach to the use of force that is an exception in Europe.

On the night of 15 to 16 August 2021, in Stains, officers of the BAC anti-crime unit opened fire eight times in six seconds on the car in which Nordine A. and Merryl B. were travelling. He was seriously injured; she was hit in the back and lost the child she was carrying. The officers claimed self-defence, saying the driver had refused to stop.

Index’s investigation, published in October 2022 with StreetPress and Le Bondy Blog, reconstructed the scene in three dimensions from smartphone footage captured by a witness. The model pinpointed the position of each officer relative to the car’s path at the moment the shots were fired. The result was unambiguous: no officer was in the path of the car. The legal conditions for self-defence – imminent danger and proportionality – were not met.

Added to the case file, the 3D reconstruction helped ensure that the officers who fired stood trial before the Bobigny criminal court (tribunal correctionnel). At the trial, Index’s video was screened in court and formed the basis for argument between the parties. It allowed the court to see, frame by frame, that the police account was physically impossible. On 7 November 2024, the two officers were given four-year suspended prison sentences and permanently banned from serving in the National Police.

This ruling is exceptional. In France, convictions of police officers for shooting at drivers who refused to stop can be counted on the fingers of one hand. The Stains judgment cracks the dam: it establishes that an independent digital reconstruction can, on its own, influence the criminal outcome of a police shooting case. For families in comparable proceedings, it is a decisive precedent.

On the morning of 27 June 2023, in Nanterre, Nahel Merzouk, aged 17, was shot in the chest and killed by a police officer during a traffic stop, after refusing to pull over. Filmed and shared on social media, the scene set the country ablaze and triggered several nights of rioting. But the footage, which showed only part of what happened, left room for debate: the officer who fired claimed he had acted in self-defence, fearing he was about to be run over.

Index stepped in within days with an initial audio analysis of the words audible in the video (with the NGO Earshot). It was quickly picked up – and misrepresented – on France 2’s 8 pm news. Then, on 27 June 2024, for the first anniversary of Nahel’s death, Index and Blast published a full 3D reconstruction of the events.

By cross-referencing all available sources – including previously unseen CCTV footage – this reconstruction revealed to the public what the social media video alone did not show: as it set off, Nahel’s car moved away from the kerb, contradicting the police account that the officer was at risk of being crushed against the low wall behind him. It also reconstructed exactly where Nahel Merzouk was sitting when the shot fired through the windscreen hit him in the chest. The 16-minute video was added to the case file by the lawyers for Nahel’s family.

On 3 June 2025, the investigating judges ruled out self-defence and ordered the officer to stand trial for murder before the Hauts-de-Seine assize court (cour d’assises) – an exceptional decision in the history of police violence in France. The accused has appealed; the trial, initially scheduled for 2026, could take place in 2027.

On the night of 2 to 3 March 2024, on the beach at Gravelines, Jumaa al-Hasan, a 27-year-old Syrian in exile, drowned while trying to reach a boat to cross the Channel. Such drownings, an almost daily occurrence on the Franco-British border, rarely get more than a brief mention in the news.

Index’s investigation, in collaboration with Liminal and Hors-Cadre, published in July 2025 with Disclose and The New Arab, broke this pattern. By gathering the testimonies of those present that night and cross-referencing the available footage, it reconstructed the sequence of events in 3D. The police operation and the officers’ actions were reconstructed minute by minute. The reconstruction showed the direct responsibility of the police in the chain of events that led to Jumaa al-Hasan’s drowning – and the subsequent failure to assist a person in danger.

The publication was picked up by AFP and received wide coverage in France and abroad. In its wake, the NGO Utopia 56 filed a complaint for involuntary manslaughter. Dunkirk prosecutors opened a judicial inquiry and referred it to the IGPN. Within days, a death at the border had become a live court case, with official investigations under way.

Beyond the individual case, this investigation marks a strategic broadening of Index’s work to border violence. The structural problem of French and European migration policy, usually discussed through statistics or opinion pieces, becomes concrete, visible, and open to legal challenge.

In the spring of 2024, Kanaky-New Caledonia rose up against a proposed reform of the electoral roll. East of Nouméa, the Kanak community of Saint-Louis, a pro-independence stronghold, became the last active centre of the uprising. Between July and September 2024, three Kanak men – known as Banane, Samy, and Johan – were shot dead there by the GIGN, the elite unit of the National Gendarmerie.

In November 2024, Index’s team went into the field. It gathered dozens of testimonies from relatives, residents of Saint-Louis, and those involved in the negotiations, collected previously unseen documents and images, and produced precise surveys and 3D scans of the sites. The investigation was then developed over several months in partnership with Le Monde, and published on 16, 17, and 18 July 2025 as a series of three interactive articles under the title “Les martyrs de Saint-Louis” [The martyrs of Saint-Louis].

Beyond the circumstances of the shootings themselves, in which the conditions for self-defence do not appear to have been met, the investigation and its ramifications showed how the French state, through its gendarmes, used every means available to restore order in Saint-Louis. The series gave the three deaths unprecedented visibility, rescuing them from being treated as peripheral crime news.

For Index, this was its first work on Kanak soil. At the scale of a whole territory, it extends the principle underpinning Index’s work: a single case, painstakingly reconstructed, makes tangible a structural problem that statistics or a bird’s-eye view leave abstract – here, the way the French state administers force in its overseas territories, in a manner that in many respects still bears the marks of a colonial relationship.

In 2024, the VII Foundation approached Index for an independent expert analysis of one of the most famous photographs in history: “Napalm Girl”, taken on 8 June 1972 during a napalm attack on the village of Trảng Bàng, and officially attributed to the photographer Nick Ut. The VII Foundation had gathered evidence challenging this attribution in favour of Nguyễn Thành Nghệ, an independent Vietnamese photographer present that day. It asked Index to weigh this evidence through an expert analysis of the images taken at the scene.

Index drew on all the visual material from the scene – photographs by several journalists present, television news footage, maps and plans – to reconstruct in three dimensions the exact layout of the site and the movements of the photographers at the moment the picture was taken. From the relative positions established, the model showed that it is highly unlikely that Nick Ut took the photograph.

Beyond the question of attribution, the case is a prism for a broader dynamic: the systematic appropriation of the work of local journalists in war zones – Vietnamese, Cambodian, Afghan, Palestinian – by foreign correspondents.

The investigation is at the heart of the documentary The Stringer, which premiered at Sundance in January 2025 and has been streaming on Netflix since November 2025. It sparked a global debate with Index’s reconstruction at its centre – the Washington Post, The Guardian, CNN, NPR, Time, The Wall Street Journal, Vanity Fair, the Los Angeles Times, and Variety all covered it extensively. On 26 June 2025, World Press Photo suspended the attribution of the photograph to Nick Ut – an unprecedented decision for such an iconic image.

This investigation marks a turning point in Index’s international recognition. It shows that its digital investigation skills can be applied to global historical questions, and establishes Index as a leading player well beyond France.