Burkinabe ex-president Compaore gets life in prison for Sankara murder

It’s in Burkina Faso.  Blaise Compaore, the former president of Burkina Faso, was sentenced in absentia to life in prison for his role in the killing of his predecessor, Thomas Sankara, in a coup in 1987. A military tribunal ruled on Wednesday.

When Sankara, a charismatic Marxist revolutionary, was 37, he was killed in the West African country’s capital, Ouagadougou. It had been four years since Sankara had taken power in a coup.
Hyacinthe Kafando and Gilbert Diendere, two of Compaore’s former top aides, were also sentenced to life in prison.

All three of them and 11 other defendants have previously said they didn’t play a role in Sankara’s death. All 11 people were sentenced to prison for between three and 20 years. Three of them were found not guilty.
In its ruling, the tribunal said that Compaore had been found guilty of an attack on state security, complicity in murder, and concealing a body, among other things.

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