Ex-president on trial for murder of iconic Burkinabe leader

Bloomberg

Burkina Faso’s exiled former president stands trial on Monday for the murder of Thomas Sankara, the iconic African leader killed in a putsch three decades ago.
Blaise Compaore, who ruled the West African nation for 27 years until he was removed in a popular uprising in 2014, will be tried in absentia at a military tribunal in the capital, Ouagadougou, for the killing of Sankara. He’s being tried along with 13 other defendants.
The trial, 34 years after Sankara’s death, is the first concrete attempt to seek justice for the killing of the radical leader.
“We’ve been waiting for this day for a very long time,” his widow, Mariam Sankara, said in a Bloomberg interview outside the court. “I hope we will finally know the truth.”
An army captain who took power in a 1983 coup, Sankara set an ambitious social and economic program that included plans to curb corruption, improve health and education, and promote women’s rights. Critics have argued that Sankara’s National Council of the Revolution imprisoned labor-union and students leaders without trial and forced political opponents into exile.
Attempts to investigate the 1987 assassination were blocked by Compaore’s administration. After his ouster, the country’s transitional government opened a probe into the murder. A warrant for Compaore’s arrest was issued the following year.

Among the defendants is General Gilbert Diendere, Compaore’s right-hand man and former commander of the elite Presidential Security Regiment. They face charges of complicity in murder, threatening state security and complicity in hiding bodies. Diendere is already serving a 20-year prison sentence for leading a military junta that briefly seized power in 2015.
Compaore, who lives in exile in Ivory Coast, has repeatedly denied involvement in the murder. He won’t attend the trial, which his lawyers have said is politically motivated.
Compaore introduced legislation in 2012 that protected former heads of state from being prosecuted. The law was reversed in 2015.