- The trial of 14 people accused in the assassination of Burkina Faso’s former president Thomas Sankara started more than 30 years after he was gunned down.
- Thomas Sankara – a charismatic Marxist revolutionary widely known as “Africa’s Che Guevara” – was killed with 12 other people in 1987 during a coup led by his former ally Blaise Compaore.
- Sankara publicly denounced the World Bank’s structural adjustment programs and was one of the first African leaders to raise awareness about the growing AIDS epidemic in the ’80s.
Reuters from CNN writes:
“The trial of 14 people accused of plotting to assassinate Burkina Faso’s former president Thomas Sankara started on Monday, more than 30 years after he was gunned down in one of the most infamous killings in modern African history.
Sankara – a charismatic Marxist revolutionary widely known as “Africa’s Che Guevara” – was killed in 1987 during a coup led by his former ally Blaise Compaore.
Compaore, the main defendant, was charged in absentia in April https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/former-burkina-faso-leader-compaore-charged-predecessor-sankaras-murder-2021-04-13 with complicity in the murder. He is living in exile in neighboring Ivory Coast and has always denied any involvement in Sankara’s death.
“It is a moment we have been waiting for,” Sankara’s widow, Mariam Sankara, told journalists as she arrived at the hearing.
She told the BBC earlier on Monday she was hoping the trial would shed light on the deaths of 12 other people on the day of the coup…”
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Categories: Government, International, Politics
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