Dozens said held, beaten in Abidjan police camp

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast (Reuters) -- Dozens of people, mostly Muslims or foreigners, are in detention in a police camp in Ivory Coast and dozens more are missing after ethnic and political clashes last week, relatives and political sources said on Sunday.

Aly Coulibaly, spokesman for the opposition Rally of the Republicans (RDR), which draws its support from the Muslim north, said that at least 116 of the party's activists had been detained and over 100 more were missing.

Outside the police school in Abidjan's smart Cocody district, dozens of relatives waited for news of loved ones, some handing over bags of food for those detained.

Ethnic and religious tensions boiled over into communal rioting last week, followed by the discovery on Friday of around 50 bullet-riddled bodies in a forest clearing north of the city.

Some of those waiting at the police school said they had not seen their relatives since Thursday. They thought they were in the camp and feared they were being beaten.

People staying in the area said they had seen trucks carrying people into the school on Thursday and had seen people made to walk on their hands and knees. They reported hearing screams and some gun shots coming from the school into the early hours on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights.

No official comment was available.

A man sitting under a tree near the school entrance told Reuters he had been released on Sunday morning after his friends paid 20,000 CFA francs ($25.60) to guards.

The man, who said he was a migrant from Niger, bore fresh welts on his arms and back which he said had been caused by police and paramilitary gendarmes beating him with sticks.

"I went out with two friends to get some food and they took us," he said, saying he had been detained on Thursday. "They were in their police truck; they kept us there until 6 p.m. (1800 GMT), then they brought us here. They hit us, hit us again. They took my shoes, my T-shirt."

The man said he could not be certain how many people were in the camp, but he thought there were around 300 or 400 detainees.

"There is not one they haven't beaten," he said.

Last week's violence followed huge demonstrations which forced army ruler General Robert Guei to flee after he tried to rig an October 22 presidential election. Socialist Laurent Gbagbo of the Ivorian Popular Front (FPI) was declared the winner and sworn in as president on Thursday.

But RDR supporters took to the streets demanding a new election because party leader Alassane Ouattara had been barred from standing. Dozens were killed in rioting which followed.

Witnesses said groups of gendarmes and police rounded people up because they had northern-sounding names or because FPI supporters had picked them out as northern Muslims.

Coulibaly said the party believed certain members of the gendarmerie and radical supporters of Gbagbo were behind the massacre of the 50 found in the forest -- believed to be young northerners -- and some other killings over the past few days.

The government has pledged to find and punish the killers. The RDR has called for an international inquiry.

One source close to the police investigation into the massacre said the men may have been killed in retaliation after a mob bludgeoned to death a gendarme. Other sources spoke of rogue elements within the gendarmerie operating outside the law.

Gbagbo's government replaced gendarmerie chief Georges Deon on Friday, appointing Colonel Touvoly Bi Zogbo, a deputy of Deon and a native of Gbagbo's region in the west, to the post.

Copyright 2000 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

See related sites about Africa

Note: Pages will open in a new browser window

External sites are not endorsed by CNN Interactive.