Summary
As it emerges from a tumultuous decade of election-related violence and grave human rights abuses, Côte d’Ivoire faces a real threat to its national security. A string of seemingly coordinated and well-organized attacks against the security forces from August through October 2012 followed previous raids along the Liberian-Ivorian border in which civilians were targeted. Since April 2012, at least 50 people, including many civilians, have been killed during these attacks. Thousands more have been driven from their homes. Unfortunately, the state response to the threat, undertaken primarily by the military, has been marked by widespread arbitrary arrests and detentions, detention-related abuses including torture, and criminal behavior against the civilian population.
The month of August saw seven attacks against military installations, highlighted by a deadly raid on one of the most important military bases in the country—in which the attackers made off with a substantial cache of arms. After a brief lull, there were separate attacks in Abidjan and along the Ghanaian-Ivorian border on September 21, leading Ivorian authorities to briefly close the border with Ghana. The border with another of Côte d’Ivoire’s neighbors, Liberia, remains partially closed after a series of cross-border attacks from Liberia into Côte d’Ivoire between July 2011 and June 2012, culminating in a June 8 attack in which seven United Nations peacekeepers and at least ten civilians were killed.
Ivorian authorities have been quick to blame the attacks on militants who remain loyal to former President Laurent Gbagbo, now in The Hague facing charges before the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity. Many of Gbagbo’s military and civilian allies remain in exile in Ghana and Liberia. Previous work by Human Rights Watch showed links between these militants in recruiting and organizing for deadly cross-border raids from Liberia into Côte d’Ivoire. The nature of some of the more recent attacks, combined with additional credible evidence, gives weight to the Ivorian government’s theory that many of the attacks appear to have been waged by pro-Gbagbo militants.
While Côte d’Ivoire faces a legitimate security threat, the Ivorian security forces—and in particular the country’s military, the Republican Forces of Côte d’Ivoire (known as the FRCI, for the French acronym)—have committed a myriad of human rights abuses in responding to these attacks, including mass arbitrary arrests, illegal detention, extortion, cruel and inhuman treatment, and, in some cases, torture. Youth from typically pro-Gbagbo ethnic groups are all too often treated as if, in the words of one person interviewed by Human Rights Watch, they are “all guilty until proven innocent.”
Based on a three week research mission to Côte d’Ivoire in late August and early September 2012, this report focuses primarily on the crackdown by security forces in the Abidjan neighborhood of Yopougon and in the town of Dabou, some 40 kilometers to the west of Abidjan. The majority of the abuses documented occurred at three military camps: the military police base in the Abidjan neighborhood of Adjamé; the former anti-riot brigade (known as the BAE, for its French acronym) base, now controlled by the military, in Yopougon neighborhood; and a military camp in Dabou.
The Republican Forces were created by a decree from President Alassane Ouattara in March 2011, during the height of the post-election crisis, and were then composed primarily of fighters from the Forces Nouvelles rebel group that controlled northern Côte d’Ivoire from 2002 through 2010. After arresting Gbagbo on April 11, the FRCI faced the daunting task of uniting fighters who fought on each side of the post-election conflict, in which at least 3,000 people were killed. The suspicion between the former belligerents remains deep, aggravated by the widespread belief that at least one of the recent attacks had support from individuals within the FRCI still loyal to Gbagbo. The result is minimal progress in fully integrating into the official army the forces that remained under Gbagbo’s command during the crisis. Eighteen months after the conflict’s end, a successful security sector reform appears distant.
Within this context, a measured and professional response to the security threat has been undermined by the concentration of power in the former Forces Nouvelles commanders, including “volunteer” fighters under their command who are not formally part of the Ivorian army. The police and gendarmerie, responsible under Ivorian law for responding to internal security threats, have been largely marginalized; Ivorian officials are quick to point out that Gbagbo stacked these forces with his supporters. The judicial police, who are legally responsible for arresting and interrogating civilian suspects and serving search warrants, played no role in the vast majority of arrests and interrogations documented by Human Rights Watch in the aftermath of the August attacks. Instead, it was the FRCI who almost exclusively undertook neighborhood sweeps, arrests, interrogations, and detentions. They held civilians at sites—namely, military camps—which are not authorized for the detention of any civilian, regardless of the alleged crime.
In the weeks following the August 6 attack on the Akouédo military camp in Abidjan, Ivorian security forces arrested hundreds of people. Some arrests occurred in hot pursuit or based on intelligence, while others occurred in mass sweeps of youth from ethnic groups which had generally supported Gbagbo in the 2010 election.
More than 100 people, including civilians and military men who remained with pro-Gbagbo forces during the crisis, were sent to the military police camp in Adjamé. Many were subjected to severe mistreatment. Human Rights Watch interviewed five victims of torture, who described being beaten brutally as soldiers demanded that they sign confessions or provide “information” about the location of weapons or others allegedly involved in attacks. Several of the torture victims had physical scars from being beaten with belts, clubs, and guns, and displayed severe emotional distress as they articulated their detention experiences. They described seeing tens of other detainees who appeared to have likewise been subject to severe physical mistreatment. Soldiers threatened to rape and kill the wife of one soldier who was detained if he did not confess.
The conditions of confinement at the Adjamé camp also contributed to the inhuman nature of the treatment. A civilian detained at the camp said after interrogators were displeased with his answers, he was thrown into a room that was filled with excrement and forced to spend the night. He said that the punishment was used on a number of occasions. Several former detainees described being held in rooms that were severely overcrowded. One soldier detained after the Akouédo attack described becoming “delirious” between the constant beatings and the almost complete denial of food and water.
Torture as such did not appear to be systematic, as several other former detainees at the Adjamé military police camp described only minimal physical abuse. However, the scale and nature of the abuses indicate that at least some former Forces Nouvelles fighters continue to resort to grave crimes at moments of tension.
Mass arbitrary arrests of perceived pro-Gbagbo supporters occurred almost daily in Yopougon through much of August and in Dabou through at least September 11. Security forces arbitrarily arrested youth in their homes, at maquis (neighborhood restaurants), at bars, in taxis and buses, when walking home from church, and when at traditional community celebrations. Soldiers would often arrive in neighborhoods in military cargo trucks and force 20 or more perceived pro-Gbagbo youth to board. In total, hundreds of young men appear to have been rounded up and detained largely on the basis of their ethnicity and place of residence.
Detainees were frequently subject to beatings during their arrest and when subsequently brought to detention sites—generally unauthorized detention sites, particularly military camps, where civilians were held in violation of Ivorian and international law. Conditions of confinement at these military camps were often inhuman, with detainees packed so tightly in a room that they could not lie down. Former detainees described how they were generally provided no food or water and had to survive by sharing what a few detainees’ family members were able to pass to them via a soldier-guard. Overcrowding was so severe at some sites that, with cells packed full, other detainees routinely spent the night outside in the open air; detainees described soldiers on some nights walking around and kicking or striking with a gun anyone who tried to sleep.
Nearly all of those interviewed said members of the security forces, particularly the FRCI, committed criminal acts. During neighborhood sweeps and mass arrests, soldiers stole cash and valuables such as cell phones, computers, and jewelry from people’s homes. Then, at the various military camps serving as detention sites in and around Abidjan, detainees described how soldiers demanded money—as much as 150,000 CFA (US$300) in some cases—in order to guarantee a person’s release. The victims described a security operation which appeared to degenerate into a lucrative extortion scheme. Several former detainees told Human Rights Watch that they were not even asked for their names, much less questioned; they described simply being held for days in miserable conditions and then forced to pay the soldiers in exchange for their freedom. They complained bitterly about the impact this had on their livelihoods.
Many of the worst abuses associated with the mass arrests occurred under the command of Ousmane Coulibaly, known by his nom de guerre “Bin Laden.” Coulibaly was the commanding officer at the former Yopougon BAE camp from May 2011 through late September 2012, and was also placed in charge of operations in Dabou after the August 15 attack there. In both locations, Human Rights Watch documented widespread arbitrary arrests, frequent inhuman treatment of detainees, and the extortion of money from detainees by soldiers under Coulibaly’s command. In an October 2011 report on the post-election violence, Human Rights Watch named Coulibaly as one of the FRCI leaders under whose command soldiers committed dozens of summary executions and frequent acts of torture during the final battle for Abidjan in April and May 2011. The continued abuses by his forces lay bare the cost of impunity for forces linked to the government.
While high-level government officials interviewed by Human Rights Watch admitted there had been some excesses in the security forces’ response to the August attacks, they stressed that the abuses needed to be seen alongside the gravity of the threat and the determination of the attackers to return the country to conflict. These officials stressed the need to be in solidarity with the military in the face of deadly attacks. The minister of interior and minister of human rights both promised to inspect the military camps identified by Human Rights Watch as marked by abuses and to urge military commanders to respect due process guarantees and to treat detainees humanely. These commitments need to be followed up with investigations by the public prosecutor’s office into cases of torture. Moreover, the Ivorian government should ensure that monitors from Ivorian and international organizations have full access to detention facilities on an ad hoc and unannounced basis.
The Ivorian criminal justice authorities have the responsibility to question, arrest, and detain individuals suspected of involvement in planning, financing, and carrying out attacks on its military. But in resorting to tactics that violate the rights of detainees and appear to target people largely on the basis of their ethnicity and perceived political preference, Ivorian security forces may be fueling the ethnic and political divisions that are at the root of these attacks. These abuses build on the already existing frustration on the part of Ivorian civil society and former Gbagbo supporters that military forces linked to the party in power remain largely above the law. Although armed forces on both sides of the post-election crisis were implicated in grave crimes—including war crimes and likely crimes against humanity—arrests and prosecutions have so far only targeted the Gbagbo camp.
For a decade the former Forces Nouvelles fighters have operated with complete impunity, despite being repeatedly implicated in grave crimes since the 2002-2003 armed conflict. President Ouattara and his government must follow through on their oft-repeated promises of ending impunity and ensure that soldiers engaged in or overseeing torture or inhuman treatment are removed from the military and subject to prosecution.
Victor’s justice and widespread abuses against perceived Gbagbo supporters is not the path to a return to rule of law. It is the path to renewed conflict, with all the grave human rights abuses that have marked the last decade. Ivorian authorities need to recognize the cost of continued impunity and sanction soldiers, regardless of their rank, who are implicated in human rights abuses. As a leader of an Ivorian civil society organization told Human Rights Watch, “Today’s impunity is tomorrow’s crime…. So long as there is impunity for [those linked to the government], there will not be a durable peace.”