His family had to wait until Compaore’s ouster in a popular uprising previous year for their requests for an investigation into the revolutionary leader’s death to get the official nod.
Advertisement
After nearly three decades, the remains of Sankara and his aides were exhumed this spring and results were released this week. The insurrection forced Blaise Compaore, the former president, to resign from his post in October 2014.
A transitional government installed after Compaore’s fall gave permission for an investigation, and the body was exhumed in May, along with the remains of 12 soldiers buried with it. “We can say he was purely and simply riddled with bullets”, Ambroise Farama, a lawyer representing his widow told reporters yesterday (Oct 13).
“In terms of the (gunshot) wounds, what was found in relation to Thomas Sankara’s body is really mind-boggling”.
The lawyer said the initial findings supported the family’s contention that Sankara was assassinated at the age of 37.
While coup leader General Gilbert Diendere, and former foreign minister General Djibril Bassole, have been arrested and charged with crimes including attacking state security and murder, members of the presidential guard “are being reintegrated into the national army”.
AfriDocs will also be screening Captain Thomas Sankara, a film that provides the political history of Burkina Faso, and in light of the recent coup and other developments in Burkina Faso, is more relevant than ever.
The RSP was the acronym of the elite presidential guard behind an abortive coup last month.
Advertisement
Burkina Faso’s government on Wednesday set November 29 as a new date for presidential and legislative elections, seeking to get a transition to democracy back on track in the wake of a failed one-week coup in September.
