At 3:00 a.m, a group of about fifteen gendarmes and military knocked and told me to open the door. I refused, and they said they would shoot the door if I didn’t open it. I opened and they came in and searched the whole place, then took 655,000 CFA from me….They took me to the police station, but when my family came to the station the next day, they said I wasn’t there. I was in the ‘botte.’ A man in the ‘botte’ doesn’t know what’s happening outside. The botte is small if you’re ten people. We were twenty-one people in there….I was there for five days. My boss came to ask if I was there, they refused and said I wasn’t there. My boss offered money to free me, he offered 200,000 CFA….The commander said he was taking us to be killed in Daloa. He said that he called Daloa to give the names to the BAE at the prefecture. On the way to Daloa, we encountered French forces. The French asked why they were taking us and they said we were assailants…. We were brought back to Duékoué, spent three more days there and then freed. They never say why they bring you. Even when you’re freed, they don’t say why they brought you there, even after a week.70 Treatment of wounded and captured rebels Human Rights Watch was not able to verify the numbers of and treatment accorded to wounded and captured rebel fighters and sympathizers by the government. However, the very paucity of wounded and captured fighters is troubling. As a general rule, the numbers of captured and wounded in situations of conflict far exceed the number of individuals killed outright. However, there have been far fewer captured and wounded fighters on either side than might have been expected in the Ivorian conflict.71 An article published in mid-December in one of the local newspapers was hardly reassuring on this issue. The last paragraph of the article described the treatment of six captured rebels, individuals who should have been accorded humane treatment in accordance with international humanitarian law. Instead, “[S]ix rebels were captured on the frontline at Blolékin. Undressed and naked as earthworms, they were well tied up like game in a hunt. Thrown down on the meeting place of the FANCIs, each loyalist was able to inflict a correction in the measure of the crimes they had committed against the people of Côte d’Ivoire.” In case the readers had any uncertainty, the first paragraph clarified their fate by stating that all six had been killed after torture.72 On a more positive note, when wounded fighters or fighters who are otherwise “hors de combat”73 have been detained, both sides have permitted humanitarian agencies such as the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to visit detention sites. VI. ATTACKS ON CIVILIANS AND OTHER NON-COMBATANTS BY THE IVORIAN REBEL GROUPS “At the beginning the rebels were proper… They were more correct than the loyalists.”74 Abuses in MPCI-controlled territory Human Rights Watch collected dozens of testimonies from civilians who lived in MPCI-controlled zones, including some who were unsympathetic to the rebels’ cause, which consistently confirmed that in the first few months the Ivorian rebels, in particular the MPCI, generally respected civilians in the towns they captured in the north. The MPCI conducted meetings with the civilian population in each town, explained their aims, and told civilians that they were not there to attack them. In Man, for instance, the rebels told civilians after the fighting was over, “Come out, we have liberated Man for you, do not be afraid of us,” and they “broke into the storehouse 70 Human Rights Watch interview, Duékoué, April 3, 2003. 71 Human Rights Watch interview, Abidjan, April 7, 2003. 72 Edouard Gonto, “Six rebelles tués, Des refugiés libériens en renfort aux FANCI,” Soir Info, December 16, 2003, p.2. 73 Literally “out of combat,” the term refers to individuals who are not actively participating in hostilities and can include combatants who are detained, wounded, sick or have surrendered their arms. 74 Human Rights Watch interview, Abidjan, March 24, 2003. Human Rights Watch 24 August 2003, Vol. 15, No. 14 (A)