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The house had a painting of a snarling guard dog on the front gate to warn potential troublemakers against entering, so the clandestine prison hidden within was known to the people of Goma as Chien Méchant–Vicious Dog–an apt warning of the horrors that took place inside. When I traveled with a Human Rights Watch (HRW) colleague on a mission in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo in March 2000, the people of the region told us about many such sites, improvised and covert places of detention where people suspected of opposing the Rwandan occupation of their territory or of organizing resistance of any sort were held indefinitely, without charge, in terrible conditions.'Houses, public offices, schools, or any other building could be commandeered for use as a makeshift prison. In several places, shipping containers were used as detention cells, and in a few cases, people inside reportedly suffocated to death when the sun beating down made the containers as hot as ovens. Reports of torture were common, but since these prisons were unofficial, illegal under international law, and said by the provisional government not to exist, neither the Red Cross nor the United Nations (UN) visited to investigate.

Chien Méchant was an improbable place for a prison–a good-sized home inside a large walled compound located in an old upscale neighborhood in the center of Goma. As we drove through town, we passed the compound many times, and we would never have guessed what was going on behind the gates had not numerous people told us that Chien Méchant was a detention center specializing in torture. Several people …