OUAGADOUGOU — After three months of hearings, the
landmark trial into the assassination of
Burkina Faso's 1980s revolutionary
leader Thomas Sankara enters its final stage next Monday.
اضافة اعلان
Marxist-Leninist icon
Sankara and 12 colleagues were gunned
down by a hit squad in 1987 during a coup that brought Sankara's former
comrade, Blaise Compaore, to power. Compaore ruled the West African country for
the next 27 years.
Here are some highlights from the trial at a military court
in the capital Ouagadougou. The proceedings are being followed avidly in
Burkina, where the unpunished killings were a taboo subject during the Compaore
years.
Conspicous by their absence
Twelve of the 14 suspects appeared in court when the trial
began in October 2021, charged with complicity in murder, harming state
security and complicity in the concealment of corpses.
But two of the key defendants — Compaore himself and his
then head of security, Hyacinthe Kafando — have been conspicuous by their
absence.
The former president, who was deposed by a popular uprising
in 2014 and fled to neighboring
Ivory Coast, has always denied ordering
Sankara's murder and is boycotting what his lawyers dismiss as a
"political trial".
Kafando, who is accused of leading the commando that carried
out the bloodbath at a meeting of Sankara's Revolutionary Council, has been on
the run since 2016.
A third key suspect, 61-year-old general Gilbert Diendere, has
categorically denied the charges against him, as have all but one of the other
defendants.
Diendere, who became Compaore's right-hand man after the
putsch, is already serving a 20-year sentence for a 2015 plot to overthrow the
transitional government that replaced his former boss.
Souring relations
Ballistics experts told the trial Sankara had been shot in
the chest at least seven times by assassins using tracer bullets. When fired,
the bullets ignite a burning powder, helping the shooter mark their target.
But the defendants said the victims died in a botched
attempt to arrest Sankara after he and Compaore fell out over the direction the
country's revolution was taking.
Sankara allies, including ex-military commander Blaise
Sanou, accused Compaore — whose bid to cling to office precipitated his 2014
downfall — of being hungry for power in 1987.
But political analyst Valere Some said it was Sankara's
decision to move to one-party rule that had sparked the rift between the two.
Sankara, still a revered figure for many, was an army
captain, aged just 33, when he came to power in a 1983 coup.
A fiery revolutionary, he railed against imperialism and
colonialism, often angering Western leaders but gaining followers across Africa
and beyond.
He scrapped the country's French colonial name — Upper Volta
— and pursued a socialist agenda of nationalisations and social reforms,
including bans on female genital mutilation, polygamy and forced marriages.
Accusations of conspiracy
In court, several of Sankara's former aides talked of an
"international conspiracy" against a progressive leader who had
sought to upend the world order and eradicate poverty in his landlocked state.
Felix Houphouet Boigny, the then president of Ivory Coast
and a close ally of former colonial power France, was accused of being
"central to the conspiracy".
Former Burkina television director Serge Theophile Balima
said the late Ivorian leader had warned Sankara, "If you don't change,
we'll do it for you."
Like suicide
Other witnesses said there had been a terrible inevitability
to Sankara's death.
"(It) was like suicide because he knew what was coming
and he did nothing to prevent it," recalled Boukary Kabore, then commander
of the advanced airborne battalion.
Sankara's security chief Famoro Ouattara said he "had
been warned about the danger he faced", but had "never let anyone
challenge Compaore militarily. ... It's as if he wanted to be killed."
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