Life sentence for Burkinabe ex-leader Compaoré for Sankara murder

The long-awaited verdict brings to shut a six-month trial for the assassination of Thomas Sankara on October 15, 1987.

A navy courtroom in Burkina Faso on April 6, 2022, handed down a life time period to former President Blaise Compaore for the 1987 assassination of revolutionary chief Thomas Sankara, following a six-month trial [File: Sia Kambou/AFP]

A Burkinabe courtroom has sentenced former President Blaise Compaoré to life imprisonment for the homicide of his predecessor, the revered Thomas Sankara.

The long-awaited verdict on Wednesday introduced to shut a six-month trial in regards to the homicide of Sankara, who was assassinated throughout a coup led by his good friend and comrade-in-arms Compaoré on October 15, 1987.

Navy prosecutors in Burkina Faso’s capital, Ouagadougou, had requested a 30-year sentence for Compaoré, who was being tried alongside 13 others.

Two different important suspects had been additionally handed life imprisonment sentences. They're Gilbert Diendéré, one of many leaders of the 1987 putsch and chief of the 2015 coup, in addition to Hyacinthe Kafando, chief of Compaoré’s guards on the time.

Compaoré, who was unseated in a 2014 rebellion, fled to neighbouring Ivory Coast the place he was given citizenship. He was tried in absentia, alongside Kafando, in contrast to Diendéré who's in custody.

Captain Thomas Sankara, president of Burkina Faso, in August 1986 [Dominique Faget/AFP]

The navy tribunal that presided over the case handed jail phrases starting from three to twenty years to eight different suspects whereas acquitted three different defendants.

A pan-Africanist chief who had taken energy in 1983, Sankara was killed aged 37 together with 12 different authorities officers. Compaoré turned his successor, ruling till his 2014 elimination.

Wednesday’s sentencing was an essential improvement within the case which has been adopted keenly by Sankara’s followers inside and out of doors Burkina Faso.

Even after his loss of life 35 years in the past, Sankara was wildly in style throughout West Africa for his sweeping socialist reforms and speeches. Right this moment, he's nonetheless identified by some because the “African Che Guevara”, referring to the Marxist revolutionary and one of many icons of the Cuban Revolution.

Throughout his time as president, he additionally notably modified the title of the previous French colony from Higher Volta to Burkina Faso, which means “the land of the upright”.