In Burkina Faso, thirty-four years later, the start of the Thomas Sankara assassination trial

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Burkinabe President Thomas Sankara with his French counterpart François Mitterrand, October 3, 1983, in Vittel, during the 10th France-Africa summit.

On October 15, 1987, the former president and “Father of the Burkinabe revolution”, Thomas Sankara, was killed during a coup: thirty-four years later, the trial of the presumed perpetrators of his assassination opens Monday, October 11, before the military court of Ouagadougou.

This trial, long awaited by the families of the victims of the 1987 putsch which brought Blaise Compaoré to power, will be held under close surveillance by the defense and security forces in a country plagued by jihadist violence since 2015.

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Main defendant, Blaise Compaoré, 70, has been living since he was overthrown by a popular uprising in 2014 in Côte d’Ivoire, a country of which he obtained nationality, and will not appear in court: his lawyers denounced “A political trial” before “An exceptional jurisdiction”.

According to Stanislas Benewendé Sankara [aucun lien familial avec Thomas Sankara], lawyer of the leader’s family ” revolutionary “ since 1997, “Compaoré’s absence is a contempt for the justice of his country of origin” and “Denotes somewhere also his possible guilt”. But, he judges, even if this trial “Is not yet the end of the tunnel, we are initiating a legal turn which is very important”.

“Decolonize mentalities”

Coming to power in a coup in 1983, Thomas Sankara was killed with twelve of his companions by a commando team during a meeting at the headquarters of the National Revolutionary Council (CNR) in Ouagadougou. He was 37 years old.

Among the fourteen accused is also General Gilbert Diendéré, 61, one of the main army leaders during the 1987 putsch.

Then became chief of staff of President Compaoré, General Diendéré is already serving a twenty-year prison sentence in Burkina Faso for an attempted coup in 2015.

MM. Compaoré and Diendéré are both accused of “Complicity in assassinations”, “Concealment of corpses” and “Attack on state security”.

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Sankara’s right-hand man, Blaise Compaoré has always denied having ordered the assassination of his brother in arms and close friend, although the coup of 1987 brought him to power.

Soldiers from Compaoré’s former presidential guard, including former adjutant Hyacinthe Kafando, suspected of having been the commando leader and who is currently on the run, are also among the accused.

The death of Thomas Sankara, who wanted “Decolonize mentalities” and disrupting the world order by standing up for the poor and the oppressed has been a taboo subject during Mr. Compaoré’s twenty-seven years in power. The case was relaunched in 2015 by the democratic transition regime and an arrest warrant issued against Mr. Compaoré by the Burkinabe justice in March 2016.

“External sponsors”

During a trip to Ouagadougou in November 2017, French President Emmanuel Macron hailed the memory of Thomas Sankara and announced the lifting of defense secrecy on documents relating to his assassination.

According to Halouna Traoré, former companion of Sankara and the only survivor of the 1987 coup, the “Trial leads us Burkinabè to look at ourselves in the mirror, to see the damage that we have done to ourselves with the complicity of the outside, because the material side of the coup d’etat is ‘has gone to Burkina, but the sponsors are outside ”.

If it is delighted with the holding of the trial, the international network Justice for Thomas Sankara, Justice for Africa notes the risk that it will be “Cut off from the international component” able to shed light on the role of France, the United States and West African countries such as the Ivory Coast of Félix Houphouët Boigny and Togo of Gnassingbé Eyadema, then ulcerated by the anti-imperialist positions of this young revolutionary adored by African youth.

According to the Thomas-Sankara International Memorial Committee (CIMTS), “Except last minute constraint”, the widow of Thomas Sankara, Mariam, who has lived since 1990 in Montpellier in the south of France, should attend the opening of the trial.

The World with AFP

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