An elder living within the neighborhood was also a witness to the killing of the thirteen. He described the operation to round up the victims and heard the gendarmes discussing the death of their comrade. He recounted:48 On Thursday [October 26], a blue truck used by the gendarmes arrived here and parked right in front of my house and about twenty gendarmes jumped out. We were afraid and all ran inside our houses and closed the doors. As they deployed throughout the neighborhood I could see they were all well armed with AK-47s. Then about an hour later I saw them come marching up the road with twelve young men. I counted them as they filed past my window. I didn’t count the gendarmes but it seemed like there was a gendarme walking by each prisoner. When they arrived at the corner, just close to my house, I could see the gendarmes were beating the prisoners and I heard a gendarme saying, ‘one dead gendarme is worth one hundred dead RDR people.’ There was a group of five gendarmes who had been participating in the beatings and, maybe because they were tired, had come to rest under my window. I heard them saying ‘the little Dioula—today we’ll finish them today. When the chief comes I’m going to ask permission to break them.’ Then at around 3:00 p.m., after they’d been resting for several minutes, one of them said, ‘after all this why are we keeping these people, why haven’t we finished them off?’ Another one of the five told him they should wait and not do anything—he was the only one who tried to stop it. But the impatient one—he was quite clear-skinned—just walked up to the people lying on the grass and started shooting. The one I thought was the boss—he was clearly dressed differently; he had black pants with a red line, a t-shirt, and a walkie-talkie, and was the only one with a pistol—had earlier walked into the neighborhood and wasn’t there when the killing took place. Several residents of a house close to where the killings described above took place recounted how a young Malian passing by was chased by and later gunned down by gendarmes. The man’s elderly father told Human Rights Watch he later counted seventeen bullet holes in his son’s body. Human Rights Watch counted over twenty bullet casings at the scene.49 Suddenly a young man jumped over the wall and came into our compound, bleeding. I heard shouting and steps and then a few seconds later a gendarme came over the wall after him and yelled, ‘Where is he?’ I denied that we had anyone, but the gendarme just followed the trail of blood and found the young man crouching behind a door. At around this time we heard loud banging at the door. At first we refused to open but after the gendarmes outside started shooting at the wall, we opened up. Then seven gendarmes rushed in to take out the youth. Some had black chalk on their faces. They all had AK-47’s except the one who seemed to be the boss who had two pistols. I saw that all of them had two ‘Vs’ [a sergeant] except the boss who had one bar [second lieutenant]. He was clearly in charge and giving the orders. After we let them in they started screaming for all of us to come out of our rooms and one of them pointed his gun at my brother and asked for our ID papers. After looking at them he said, ‘you’re a Dioula, it’s you we’re looking for.’ Then my brother’s girlfriend, her sisters and another women started begging for his life. His girlfriend explained, ‘I’m not a Dioula—I’m a Guerré and he is the father of my child. I live with him and can tell you there’s no problem with him.’ Just at this moment the other gendarmes were dragging the youth out the door so the one 48 49 Human Rights Watch interview, Abidjan, November 17, 2000. Human Rights Watch interview, Abidjan, November 18, 2000. Human Rights Watch 27 August 2001, Vol. 13, No. 6(A)