On Thursday [October 26] at around 4:00 p.m. as I was getting ready for afternoon prayer, around ten police, including two women from the 13th District Police arrived in two civilian cars. They parked in front of my compound,39 got out and announced that everyone who’s a Dioula should come out. They were dressed in solid green. They asked us to show our ID cards, and ordered the Dioula men to lie in the gutter. Since I had been inside praying, my wife lied and said that I was out. But then they pointed a gun at her and that obliged me to come outside. Then without telling us why, they loaded us in two civilian cars and took us to the 13th District. They didn’t interrogate us or ask us any questions. They just ‘accused’ us of supporting Alassane. They beat us, walked on our back and threw cold water on us. We spent the night there and then the next morning they drove around picking up other prisoners until we were about forty in numbers. Along the way they told us to collect money together so we would be let go. We took up a collection but then they took our money and brought us to the Ecole de Police anyway. RDR supporters also sought out and attacked people on the basis of ethnicity; in their case those from nonDioula ethnic groups. A young woman from Abobo who supports the FPI was attacked by an RDR mob in her home in October and described how the mob targeted ethnic Baoules and Betes:40 A few of them kicked the door in and shouted that they were looking for Betes. They asked my two brothers for identification papers. My brothers replied that we belong to the PDCI, that we didn’t even vote, and that we were Baoules and not Betes. The intruders shouted that we were all the same, that we were the ones who were happy when Gbagbo won the elections. There were several attacks against churches by RDR supporters, resulting in the destruction of church buildings, bibles, pews, vehicles, and other property. Whereas state security forces had overtly sided with FPI mobs during attacks against mosques, they intervened to halt attacks against churches. A member of an evangelical church in the Port Bouet II neighborhood in Yopougon described how gendarmes stepped in to protect it and him from an RDR mob:41 At 9:00 a.m. my people told me that the church was on fire. About ten of us rushed to see for ourselves. Just in front of it we saw a group of RDR people with stones, knives, and machetes. They were saying, ‘they burned our mosque and now it’s their turn. Where is your pastor, we’ll kill him.’ The pews, bibles, books, and other documents and office equipment from the church were on fire just outside the entrance. They were throwing rocks and breaking the windows. Then the gendarmes arrived and chased them away. After that everything calmed down. “Disappearances” Numerous men captured by police and paramilitary gendarmes during the October wave of violence have at this writing yet to be accounted for. All fifteen victims of “disappearance” documented by Human Rights Watch were either politically aligned with the RDR, foreigners, or from northern ethnic groups, and were detained or last seen in the afternoon of October 26, 2000. All but one was last seen in the RDR stronghold of Abobo. Most witnesses interviewed by Human Rights Watch said the “disappeared” family members were seized from their homes or in their neighborhoods by men in uniform, sometimes accompanied by armed men in civilian dress. They described spending days searching for their relatives in morgues, hospitals, prisons, and police and gendarme barracks. The most serious case followed the detention by police of nine men from Abobo. Three 39 A “compound” is a collection of rooms or small dwellings, often behind one wall, which houses members of an extended family or several families and which share cooking, washing, and toilet facilities. 40 Human Rights Watch interview, Abidjan, November 15, 2000. 41 Human Rights Watch interview, Abidjan, April 25, 2001. Human Rights Watch 23 August 2001, Vol. 13, No. 6(A)