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As the packed truck meandered through the dunes, it was blown away by the scorching wind, and some survived by dehydration and drinking urine, while others were thrown into the desert of Chad.
After being rounded up by police over mass protests against Chad’s military dictatorship last October, hundreds of mostly young men are mired in nightmares to the high-security Korotolo prison deep in the hostile Jurab desert. Faced with a two-day trip like.
After they reached remote prisons, many were sentenced in a lawyerless class trial and accused of the brutal crimes of jihadist prisoners.
“We were only thinking about death,” Nazirem, one of several prisoners since his release, told AFP.
Security forces wiped out men before and after mass protests against plans to extend rule by General Mahamat Idriss Debbie Itono’s military junta by two years.
The 38-year-old general took over the position in April 2021 when his father, Idris Deby Itno, who ruled with an iron fist for 30 years, died of injuries sustained fighting the rebels.
Opposition parties called for demonstrations on October 20, the day the military was originally supposed to cede power. A bloody repression ensued.
Official figures say 50 people have died, but opposition groups are now forced into exile, saying the number is much higher.
Known as “Black Thursday,” it was one of the deadliest days in the history of the Central African semi-desert nation.
But for hundreds of young people, the nightmare was just beginning.
death and deprivation
Dieudonné, a 34-year-old construction worker, told AFP he was returning home from work the night before the protests when soldiers stopped him, forced him into a car with another man, and drove him into a clearing. Told.
“That’s when they started beating us,” he said, his voice still trembling with fear.
He was detained at the police station for 48 hours before being taken to Korotoro.
“We have documented many cases of men being arrested simply because they were in the wrong area,” said Lewis Madge, Africa director at Human Rights Watch (HRW).
These people “had nothing to do with the protests, but they were taken to Korotoro”.
A man interviewed by AFP said the journey through the Jurab Desert to Korotoro was a hellish ordeal marked by death and deprivation.
“We were piling up in trucks,” Najirem told AFP with Eves, a 28-year-old house painter, outside a church in the capital N’Djamena.
During the journey, “we were not given anything to drink or food. We stopped several times and asked to drink from the backwater, but they refused. We drank urine to survive.” Some people were,” Eve said.
Several died along the way.
“We piled up the bodies. Some started to rot in the trucks. Security caught them and threw them into the bush,” Nazirem said.
Despite the inhospitable environment, “people were still able to jump out of the trucks and escape,” Nazirem recalls.
“Some were successful, but only lucky. Others were shot by security guards,” he adds.
HRW’s Madge said, “We have heard that many people may have died in detention after bodies were dumped in the bush on the way to Korotoro.We are still working to confirm these details. ” he said.
“Chad Guantanamo”
The World Organization Against Torture said more than 2,000 people were arrested before and after the protests, but the government admitted only 621 people, including 83 minors, all of whom were taken to Korotoro.
Shown in satellite imagery as an ocher blotch surrounded by sand dunes in the central part of the country, Korotoro Prison was built in 1996 in an uninhabited area that is difficult to access. It has a capacity of 500 or 600 prisoners and mainly houses prisoners serving long sentences for terrorism.
Fighters from Boko Haram and the Islamic State jihadist group are held there, nicknamed “Chad’s Guantanemo” after the infamous US military prison.
“Prisoners cannot escape and risk dying of thirst,” the former justice minister told AFP on condition of anonymity.
Those imprisoned after the protests have stayed there without access to lawyers or families, and some say they don’t know if their children are still alive, they told AFP.
torture by jihadists
On December 11, 401 of those arrested were put on a four-day collective trial.
Prosecutors said 262 people were sentenced to two to three years in prison for crimes such as “unauthorized assembly” and “disturbing public order.”
The remaining 139 were released, some on probation. The minor inmates are brought back to N’Djamena and awaiting to appear before a child judge.
“People have been arrested in illegal circumstances and tried in illegal circumstances,” said Frederic Dynonet, Coordinator of the Counsel for Arrested Persons.
In Koro Toro, “We were put in cells of forty to fifty people. We were handed over to the jihadists. They were our guards. They held us with iron bars. ,” said Eve. Najirem backed this up, adding that “Boko Haram jihadists” were tasked with torturing them.
“There have been serious and credible allegations of torture in Koro Toro, some of which have led to the deaths of detainees,” said Chad on several occasions to investigate the events surrounding protests against HRW. said Madge, who visited
A government spokesman and the Ministry of Defense did not respond to multiple requests for comment on the accusations.
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