Then they told us to take our clothes off and walk on our knees for over twenty meters. They continued beating us and one of them hit my penis with the hook on his red belt. It was so painful, it was bleeding and I started screaming. One of them said, ‘oh if we’ve hurt you there, don’t worry, we have doctors here,’ then he called another gendarme who sprayed a little can of what I think was tear gas on my penis, nose, and eyes. I almost lost consciousness. Entering Camp Agban I saw there were about one hundred other prisoners. They didn’t ask us any questions. They spoke of the RDR, made us all say, ‘Alassane is a Burkinabé,’ and made us sing the national anthem. The beat us using their belts, wooden sticks and iron bars. At one point they took our clothes, which were in a pile outside the entrance, set them on fire and went around dropping the bits of burning cloth on our legs and backs. They picked clothes with plastic in them—like sports suits—because they burned better. Then, around 6:00 am the next morning, they told us to wash all the blood off the walls from the place where we were being held. It was an open area with a cement floor and no roof. We washed all of it—and there was a lot of blood—but one gendarme came and said it wasn’t clean enough. We washed it again and then they made us do push-ups. One prisoner was so wounded he couldn’t do the push-ups and a gendarme came and kicked him hard. Then they ordered us to clean the offices of the gendarmes. Finally they gave us clothes and let us go. Detainees being held within the National Police Academy were beaten by both cadets and officers. A nineteen-year-old RDR activist who spent six days there described his experience:30 From the moment we arrived at the Academy on October 26, the police started beating us. By 9:00 p.m. or so there were about 300 people. I stayed in for several days and was beaten and tortured by both policemen and cadets. It was the Police Academy; I guess they were teaching the cadets how to behave. Some were with two ‘V’s’ [a sergeant]31 and others had the markings of students. We were all in one big room and they tortured us in many ways. First were the constant beatings; with batons, wood, cut tree branches. The police kept waking us up by throwing cold water on us. Then they had us—two-by-two—crawl a distance on our knees and the one who arrived last was beaten. They’d put two of us together and order us to fight, and if they say we’re faking, they beat us up. Sometimes they walked on our backs. I don’t think anyone died in custody but I saw a good number of people who’d lost consciousness and people who couldn’t stand anymore. They made us chant, ‘Alassane is Mousi [Burkinabé] and Gbagbo President.’ On Friday some of the police were talking about a gendarme who had been killed and then on Saturday, a few police brought in a newspaper with the news and pictures of the Yopougon massacre and said, ”this is the way you should’ve been killed...but you’re lucky, you’re in the police academy.” There were parents outside waiting to get their children and I understand they were paying 5,000 CFA [U.S.$7] to free them. We later heard one woman paid 20,000 CFA [U.S.$28] but they didn’t let her son go. I think some people were being passed off as relatives of the police officers but were in fact just paying them off. I was finally let go on Monday evening at around 9:00 p.m. when a friend’s mother paid about 4,000 CFA [U.S.$6] for each of us. 30 Ibid. In the Ivorian Gendarmerie, the ranks distinguished by V’s are those of non-commissioned officers; one V designates a corporal, two Vs a sergeant, three Vs a staff sergeant. One and two bars are the symbols of junior rank officer, with one bar for a second lieutenant and two bars for a first lieutenant. Three bars distinguish a captain and four bars a major. 31 Human Rights Watch 19 August 2001, Vol. 13, No. 6(A)