In Camp Commando I ran into a friend of mine, S., and he told me he'd been arrested while walking by Camp Commando. He explained that after stopping him they'd asked him for his ID and when they saw that he had a Dioula name, he was arrested on the spot. There were two adolescents; one was a student, still in school uniform, aged about thirteen or fourteen, and another, a youth from Benin, around fifteen. They started beating us from the moment we got off the truck. They ordered us to lie down and whipped us with their red belts. At one point they threw a bucket of water mixed with some kind of burning pepper in it and people screamed from the pain it caused as it went into the open wounds. Then at around 1:00 p.m. they told us to lie on our backs and face the sun. Another torture was when they threw tear gas at us and refused to allow us to move. Then at around 3:00-3:30 p.m. (it was just after the afternoon call to prayer which we could hear from a nearby mosque), I heard a siren and saw a car coming into the main entrance to the camp. A few gendarmes got out of the car and started yelling and shouting and crying. Then one of the gendarmes in blue just started shooting us. First he shot three newly arrested people with a pistol. It happened less than five meters from where I was sitting. Then a few other gendarmes started shooting at us. They were yelling in a sobbing, angry way. They were in fits of emotion. One of them said, ‘We're going to kill you all; if our people are going to die then we'll kill you.’ As they were shooting I lay down and pretended I was dead. The youth from Benin was hit and lay just on top of me and was just crying, ‘Forgive me, have mercy on me.’ I could see my friend S. had been hit on the leg, throat and chest. And then [a gendarme] standing several meters away said, ‘Oh so you're not all dead’ and I tried to pretend I was dead. We all lay there, people dying were breathing heavily. I could hear a boy from Benin saying in a soft voice, ‘Give me water, I'm so thirsty, bring me water.’ After the shooting there were about thirty dead or almost dead, and more seriously wounded. Then about ten lightly injured. Then about an hour or a so later a new group of prisoners were brought in. Then those prisoners and those of us who weren't wounded were ordered to load up the bodies onto a big blue truck. I loaded one person on the truck and then just stayed there trying not to be noticed. Then at around 6:00 p.m. we took off. There were about fifteen gendarmes in our truck. They were dressed in full commando uniform and several had bandoliers wound around their waists. We headed north towards the Yopougon Prison and those of us still alive started talking to each other in whispers wondering if they were going to kill us or take us to the prison [in Yopougon]. But mostly we were just silent. There were about thirty to forty gendarmes in total participating in the operation. Then we got to the place. We were terrified. Then they ordered us to unload the bodies. Since I was in the back of the truck I tried to stay there for as long as I possibly could. Then they ordered us to come and sit next to the dead and dying. Several of us were lying down trying to pretend we were dead but I was lucky because I had lain down first and then two others lay on top of me. It seemed like the dead had been separated from the wounded—maybe to make killing the survivors easier. I remember hearing them talking to each other saying, ‘Why is it only now you northerners are protesting the election results; three weeks ago you didn't say anything. Now that the General is gone and Gbagbo is a civilian you think you can take over.’ Then several of them, I couldn't really count, took up formation in front of us, we heard them loading their guns and the firing started. The boy on top of me received a lot of bullets. He screamed when he was hit and then started groaning and breathing heavily. After a few minutes of firing, a few of them went around finishing people off. Then they walked Human Rights Watch 30 August 2001, Vol. 13, No. 6(A)