who then started shooting in the air. The women then ran about fifty meters away and watched from there. Then we had to walk on our knees towards the waiting vehicles and the police said, ‘you Muslims are nasty, dirty people, where are the guns you’re hiding?’ They didn’t ask us any questions, tell us what we were accused of or give us time to sort the problem out. Many of us held onto our Korans and the imam clutched his precious book of teachings. Then they took us to the 13th district police station. As we got down from the vehicles there were several FPI activists in a line throwing stones and rocks at us. First the police ordered us, including the imam, to lie down in the mud, but one of the mosque youths said that he wouldn’t allow it so he got down first and told the imam to lie on top of him. When they started to beat us with their batons and another youth said he wouldn’t allow the imam to be beaten so he lay on top. The police really beat this boy, as if trying to punish our imam. Later they ordered some other prisoners to urinate in bottles and they poured it all over us. The whole time we were trying to protect our Korans. But then the policemen started grabbing them and ripping them up in front of us. One of the policemen holding a rocket launcher ordered the imam to give up his sacred book. He refused but the policeman finally forced it from his hands and right in front of all of us started to rip up the pages of that very book the imam’s father had brought from Saudi. The imam just stood by and looked. It was painful for all of us. Then around 8:00 p.m. they asked for our names and freed eight from my group including those who had typically non-Dioula names like Koffi and Kwasi. Then in groups of twenty they loaded the rest of us in into the police trucks and took us to the Police Academy. The sixty-five-year-old caretaker of Depot No.9 Mosque in Abobo described seeing his mosque attacked by a patrol of gendarmes on December 5, 2000. The imam, his five sons and three nephews were captured from their house and detained for several days during the same operation:104 I live about fifty meters from the mosque. On Tuesday things in our neighborhood were very tense. At around 9:00 a.m. I saw a group of about twenty or thirty gendarmes dressed in combats, with red belts and blue helmets arrive in a big truck. As soon as they drove up, the residents of the neighborhood rushed into their houses and shut the doors. The gendarmes parked near the mosque, got out and started patrolling here and there. Some time later I saw five or so gendarmes take position around the mosque. First they fired at least three tear gas canisters inside. Then at least four of them took up position and started shooting at the mosque. I heard the sound of windows being broken and bullets pinging against the mosque. They stayed for about ten minutes but never scaled the fence, perhaps because they could see no one was inside. A forty-year-old Malian man who was dragged from his house by police on December 5, 2000, as he was preparing to pray described religious taunting suffered while in detention:105 After detaining us the police asked who was fasting. In our small group we were about five. Then they forced us to drink water. They held a cup above us and asked us to open our mouths. We were defenseless. I was held for ten days and was not able to pray through my entire time in detention. And it was holy month. There was nothing we could do. I just surrendered to God because I simply had no power. 104 105 Human Rights Watch interview, Abidjan, February 11, 2001. Human Rights Watch interview, Abidjan, February 7, 2001. Human Rights Watch 55 August 2001, Vol. 13, No. 6(A)