TRIAL: Soldier Admits Role In Murder Of Thomas Sankara

By SMN Reporter

OUAGADOUGOU- SHIFTMEDIA- Thirty four (34) years after his death, justice seems to prevail regarding the death of Burkina Faso leader Thomas Sankara.

In a Military Court trial currently going on in the Burkina Faso capital, Ouagadougou, a soldier has admitted that he was privy to the gruesome murder that took place in 1987.

So far 14  people are on trial for the assassination that left Sankara aged 34 then and 12 others killed in a ray of bullets as they held a meeting.

Sankara’s former friend and former comrade-in-arms, Blaise Compaore, who came to power after the bloodbath is among those accused.

Compaore is currently living in Ivory Coast where he fled after general uprising against his government forced him out of power in 2014.

France24. reported that during one of the trials, former private Yamba Elise Ilboudo, 62, admitted a charge of complicity in endangering state security though he said his actions were unpremeditated.

Yamba told court that he had not taken part in any meeting to plan the assassination, nor had he taken part in the shooting.

He said that on the day of the October 15 1987 coup, he was “at Blaise Compaore’s home” with other men.

“We were under the orders of Hyacinthe Kafando, as head of security,” Ilboudo said.

Kafando, who became chief warrant officer in Compaore’s presidential guard after the coup, is alleged to have been in charge of the hit squad. He is on the run.

Compaore who has always denied suspicions that he engineered the assassination is being tried in absentia.

Ilboudo said he was told by Kafando to drive to the meeting which Sankara attended.

When they arrived, Kafando and another individual called Maiga, “who had been driving Blaise Compaore’s car, got out and opened fire,” he testified.

Kafando then ordered the men in the two cars to get out.

Some “went to the rear of the building where President Sankara was”, Ilboudo said.

He said that he remained in the car during what happened next, and did not open fire.

Compaore and others face charges of complicity in murder, harming state security and complicity in the concealment of corpses.

A charismatic leader who railed against capitalism, he threw out the country’s name of Upper Volta, a legacy of the French colonial era, and renamed it Burkina Faso, which means “the land of honest men”.

He pushed ahead with a socialist agenda of nationalizations and banned female genital mutilation, polygamy and forced marriages.

SOURCE/AFP