THE trial of exiled former Burkina Faso President, Blaise Compaoré and 12 others for the murder of bosom friend the late President Thomas Sankara, who was assassinated in a coup d’état has been scheduled to commence on October 11, 2021, military prosecutors have announced on Tuesday, several international news channels report.
Exiled Compaoré rode to power after he led a coup that assassinated Sankara, a charismatic revolutionary figure, on October 15, 1987 at the age of 37.
Compaoré, who is currently in exile where he has also taken citizenship, and 12 other alleged accomplices were indicted and charged early May 2021 by a military tribunal over the assassination. He lives in Abidjan, capital of Cote d’Ivoire, where he has family ties, being married to the daughter of late Ivorian President, Félix Houphouët-Boigny.
Tuesday’s announcement came in a statement from prosecutors at the military tribunal in capital Ouagadougou. The tribunal has guaranteed that the proceedings will be held in public, beginning at 9am local time on October 11, 2021.
The case, according to Guy Hervé Kam, one of the lawyers representing families of victims, said it has taken 34 years for the case to finally go to court, adding that it was a victory and “a time for truth” for the families. “It’s been a long wait to establish in a clear, precise and public way, who was individually or collectively responsible for the events which led to the tragedy on 15th October 1987,” he said.
Compaoré and the other accused are facing charges of harming state security, complicity in murder and complicity in the concealment of corpses. Among those accused alongside Compaoré is General Gilbert Diendere, Compaoré’s former right-hand man and a former head of the elite Presidential Security Regiment (RSP) at the time of the coup.
Diendere is already serving a 20-year sentence in Burkina Faso for masterminding a plot in 2015 against the West African country’s transitional government. He is believed to have headed the unit that killed Sankara.
Several members of the presidential guard at that time will also join them in the dock. But 34 years after the events in question, some of those originally accused have already died, according to lawyers for the plaintiffs in the case.
Compaoré, who was dethroned from power in 2014 in an uprising after 27 years in power, has always denied ordering Sankara’s murder.
The case was reopened in 2015 with the installation of a transitional government and in March 2016 a warrant was issued for Compaoré’s arrest. Unless he chooses to present himself for trial, he will be judged in absentia.
