A military tribunal has on Wednesday sentenced Burkina Faso’s former President Blaise Compaore to life imprisonment for complicity in the 1987 murder of his predecessor Thomas Sankara.
Sankara gunned down in the West African nation’s capital Ouagadougou at the age of 37, four years after he took power in a coup.
The special court in Ouagadougou ruled that Compaoré was complicit in Sankara’s murder, sentencing him and his former head of security, Hyacinthe Kafando, to life in jail. The former president, who denounced a “political trial”, was tried in absentia on counts of attacking state security, concealing a corpse and complicity in a murder.
Both have previously denied complicity in Sankara’s murder. The former president went on to rule for 27 years before being ousted in another coup in 2014 after which, he fled to Ivory Coast.
Details shortly…