I’d gone to work that day, but my boss told me that because of the situation I should return home. Shortly after getting back home, between 9:00 and 10:00 a.m., a friend of mine came to our house to warn us that the gendarmes and FPI youths were going around the neighborhood pointing out Dioula homes and capturing people. I rushed to close the main door to our compound, but shortly after a group of gendarmes and FPI people came. I saw four gendarmes with red berets, and about twenty FPI youths. First they sent tear gas bombs and then they broke into the compound. We all tried to scatter; many from my compound jumped over the walls and ran but I couldn’t get away. One of the gendarmes accused us of being among the RDR marchers and of throwing stones at them and some of the FPI people started beating us. Then they shoved me into a truck with about fifteen others, including three Burkinabés and one Malian, and took me to the Police Academy where I spent about one week. Serious human rights violations, including murder and rape, were committed by FPI supporters in full view of the police and gendarmes. In some cases police and gendarmes attempted to intervene, but Human Rights Watch documented several disturbing incidents of overt complicity—and in some cases collaboration—while these abuses were taking place. On December 4, an ambulance carrying five RDR supporters wounded during the march to the stadium was stopped in Cocody by some twenty gendarmes backed up by a large group of FPI supporters. The gendarmes ordered the wounded to get out of the ambulance, threatening to kill them and the ambulance personnel if they refused to do so. One of the women patients was then dragged away and raped by at least two of the FPI youths in full view of the gendarmes. One of the wounded, a twenty-six-year-old mechanic, described what happened:83 Five of us, three men and two women, had been hit during clashes around the fire brigade. I’d been shot in the leg. Later the Red Cross picked us up in an ambulance to take us to Cocody University Hospital. When we neared the national television station we were stopped by about twenty gendarmes. Hanging around them was a big mob of around a hundred FPI youths. The FPI had their shirts tied around their waists, wore black bandanas and had white powder on their faces. One of the gendarmes ordered everyone, including the wounded, to come down and threatened to kill anyone who didn’t. He put his head inside the ambulance said ‘we’re going to kill all of you and leave you in a shallow grave behind the prison just like the last time you marched.’ [Referring to the fifty-seven men whose bodies were found in the Charnier de Yopougon.] Then the driver said, ‘no you can’t shoot us, you can’t do this, I will denounce you.’ But the gendarme just pushed the driver and pointed his gun at us. Those of us who were able then got down, being pushed and slapped us we did. One gendarme hit me on the right check with the butt of his rifle. They left the two most seriously wounded because they’d lost consciousness. One of the wounded girls was about seventeen. She’d been hit in the arm with a tear gas canister and wasn’t too badly wounded. When she got down from the ambulance a group of about five FPI youths came up to the gendarme who’d stopped us and started yelling, ‘Oh chief, let us have this one, she’s from the north anyway, we want to do something with her.’ The gendarme said, ‘the northerners are like sheep, do what you want.’ And then the girl was dragged off by the youths. She was crying, ‘forgive me for what I’ve done, leave me, leave me.’ They took her about five meters away by the side of the road, and I saw one, then another raping her. Then another group of about twenty FPI youths came and walked off with her. The raping took about ten minutes. 83 Human Rights Watch interview, Abidjan, February 7, 2001. Human Rights Watch 43 August 2001, Vol. 13, No. 6(A)