OUAGADOUGOU (Reuters) – Ousted Burkinabe president Blaise Compaor was sentenced by a military court on Wednesday to life imprisonment for the assassination of his predecessor Thomas Sankara.
Thomas Sankara, a Marxist revolutionary nicknamed the “African Che Guevara”, was assassinated in Ouagadougou in 1987 during the coup that brought Blaise Compaor to power. He died aged 37, four years after the coup that brought him to power.
A refugee in Cte d’Ivoire since he was overthrown by a coup in 2014, Blaise Compaor was tried in absentia.
His former head of close security, Hyacinthe Kafando, was also sentenced to life imprisonment.
The two men have in the past denied any involvement in the death of Thomas Sankara.
(Report Thiam Ndiaga, written by Nellie Peyton; French version Myriam Rivet, told by Jean-Michel Blot)