One Time Burkina Faso President, Bags Life Imprisonment Over Murder Of Ex-leader, Thomas Sankara

Ex-President of Burkina Faso, Blaise Compaore was sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment for complicity in the 1987 murder of his predecessor, Thomas Sankara, in a coup, a military tribunal ruled on Wednesday. SAHARA REPORTERS reports.

According to SAHARA REPORTERS, the charismatic Marxist revolutionary Sankara was gunned down in the West African nation’s capital, Ouagadougou, at the age of 37, four years after he took power in a previous putsch, AFP reports.

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Two of Compaore’s former top associates, Hyacinthe Kafando and Gilbert Diendere, were also sentenced to life imprisonment. Information Guide Nigeria

All three have previously denied involvement in Sankara’s death along with 11 other defendants.

Three of the 11 were declared innocent and the rest received prison terms of between three and 20 years. jamb results

Compaore was found guilty of an attack on state security, complicity in murder, and concealment of a corpse, the tribunal said in its ruling.

He went on to rule for 27 years before being ousted in another coup in 2014 and fleeing to Ivory Coast, where he is still believed to live.

Sankara, who gained a reputation as Africa’s “Che Guevara”, took power on a promise to thwart corruption and post-colonial influences, denouncing foreign aid as a control mechanism.

He rolled out mass vaccination against polio, banned female circumcision and polygamy, and was one of the first African leaders to publicly recognise the growing AIDS epidemic as a threat to the continent.

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