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Burkina Faso’s former president Blaise Compaoré was sentenced in absentia to life in jail over his role in the 1987 murder of the country’s revolutionary folk hero Thomas Sankara, a military court ruled on Wednesday, wrapping up a long-awaited trial that was disrupted by a coup.
An iconic figure sometimes dubbed the “African Che Guevara”, Sankara was just 33 when he came to power in 1983, setting in motion a revolution that pledged to “decolonise African minds” and continues to inspire followers across the continent.
The short-lived experiment came to a brutal end on October 15, 1987, when he and 12 colleagues were gunned down by a hit squad during a meeting at the presidential palace in Ouagadougou. The massacre coincided with a coup that took Sankara’s erstwhile comrade Compaoré to power.
On Wednesday, a special military tribunal ruled that Compaoré was guilty of complicity in Sankara’s murder, sentencing him and his former head of security, Hyacinthe Kafando, to life in jail. General Gilbert Diendéré, one of the commanders of the army during the 1987 coup and the main defendant present at the trial, was also sentenced to life.
Prosecutors had demanded a 30-year jail term for Compaoré, who was deposed in a 2014 popular uprising and has lived in exile in neighbouring Ivory Coast ever since. The former president, who denounced a “political trial”, was tried in absentia on counts of attacking state security, concealing a corpse and complicity in a murder.
Throughout his 27-year reign, Compaoré clamped a tight lid on the circumstances of Sankara’s demise, fuelling speculation that he was the mastermind. It was only after his ouster that Sankara’s remains were finally exhumed, paving the way for the long-waited trial.
International ‘conspiracy’
One of the world’s poorest countries, Burkina Faso has a long history of political turmoil and is battling a jihadist…
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Source : france24
