Several other RDR supporters described being captured during joint operations between FPI supporting youths and the security services. A twenty-seven-year-old student captured by FPI supporters and then handed over to the security forces during an operation on the afternoon of December 4, 2000, recounted how he was only saved when he pretended he belonged to a non-northern ethnic group:80 To get away from the troubles we climbed up to the second story of the technical institute and just prayed that we’d be ok. But eventually the gendarmes discovered we were there and started firing a lot of tear gas. They broke the windows and launched tear gas bombs directly into where we were hiding. They told us to come out or they’d kill us. I was met by three gendarmes, one policeman and five FPI youths who had white charcoal on their faces. There were three other youths lying on the ground; bleeding and moaning. Then in front of the gendarmes two FPI youths started beating us with a big piece of wood. There was one youth they accused of being a Dozo and who was being severely beaten by two FPI youths and one gendarme. The FPI youths beat us more and seemed to be the ones giving the orders. It was the FPI who said there were still people hiding inside and said the gendarmes should open fire to scare them out— and they did. I never saw the gendarmes giving the FPI orders. I begged them, I said I wasn’t in the march. One of the gendarmes kept beating me and then an FPI youth asked me what my explanation was. I explained that I’d gone to see my parents, that they needed medicine, and that I was captured on my way. Seeing he didn’t believe me, I explained again in Agni [from the Akan ethnic group of south and east Côte d’Ivoire] and after some time he said to the gendarme, ‘leave him, I think I know this guy.’ Then the youth helped me get out of there. After a thirty-six-year-old RDR supporter was severely beaten up by a group of three FPI student militants (he suffered a broken arm and three-inch skull fracture), he ran to the police for protection. He described what happened then:81 After being tear-gassed we all scattered in different directions. While trying to escape I was caught by three FPI people who immediately set upon me and started beating me; one robbed my shoes, another took my blue jeans. They hit me on the head with iron bars and thick pieces of wood. Others RDR people were being beaten at the same time. I finally broke away and ran to a policeman, thinking he’d protect me but instead he hit me, whack, with the blunt end of his rifle. I fell down. Then four FPI, including the same three who’d been beating me, came to where I was with the policeman and said they wanted to put me in a car which had been set on fire during the disturbances. And the policeman just nodded and told me to say my last prayers but thankfully at the same moment the Commissioner of the 8th Police District of Cocody happened to come by. He told me to get up and took me inside his car to the station where he ordered them to call the Red Cross to take me to the hospital. Several other victims from Koumassi and Abobo described being dragged from their homes by joint patrols of FPI supporters and either police or gendarmes. A twenty-three-year-old Burkinabé who was one of fifteen people, mostly foreigners, captured from Koumassi on the morning of December 4, 2000, described what happened.82 80 Human Rights Watch, Abidjan, February 3, 2001. Human Rights Watch interview, Abidjan, February 7, 2001. 82 Human Rights Watch interview, Abidjan, February 7, 2001. 81 Human Rights Watch 42 August 2001, Vol. 13, No. 6(A)