Blaise Compaoré sentenced to life imprisonment at military tribunal over role in 1987 killing of Thomas Sankara
Burkina Faso’s former president Blaise Compaoré has been sentenced to life imprisonment after being found guilty of complicity in the 1987 murder of his predecessor Thomas Sankara, concluding a landmark trial and a decades-long quest for justice.
Sankara, a Marxist icon of pan-Africanism hailed across Africa and beyond, was gunned down along with 12 colleagues in the west African nation’s capital, Ouagadougou, at the age of 37, four years after he took power in a coup.