A Former Army Private has admitted at a trial that began on Tuesday, April 5, 2022, that he helped transport a hit squad to assassinate Burkina Faso’s revolutionary leader, Thomas Sankara, 34 years ago.
The trial unfolding at a military court in Ouagadougou is being closely followed by the Burkinabe public, many of whom hope it will shed light on one of their country’s darkest chapters. Fourteen people are on trial for the 1987 assassination in which Sankara and 12 others were cut down in a hail of bullets at a top government meeting. The accused included Sankara’s friend and Former Comrade-in-arms, Blaise Compaore, who later became President from 1987 (the same year of the assassination) to 2014.
How the assassination was conducted
In testifying to the Court, Former Private, Yamba Elise Ilboudo, 62, admitted a charge of involvement in endangering State Security. However, he quickly added that his actions were unpremeditated, saying he had not taken part in any meeting to plan the assassination, nor taken part in the shooting. Ilboudo revealed that on the Coup day of October 15, 1987, he was “at Blaise Compaore’s home” with other men.
“We were under the orders of Hyacinthe Kafando, as Head of Security.”
Former Private, Yamba Elise Ilboudo
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. As it stands, reports have suggested that Kafando is on the run.
The Former Private, Ilboudo disclosed that he was told by Kafando to drive to the meeting that Sankara attended. Upon arrival, Kafando and another individual called Maiga, “who had been driving Blaise Compaore’s car, got out and opened fire,” Iiboudo testified. Kafando then ordered the men in the two cars to get out.
Iiboudo added that some “went to the rear of the building where President Sankara was”. He said that he remained in the car during the assassination, and did not open fire. But Compaore on the other hand has denied suspicions that he engineered the assassination and likewise he’s being tried in absentia.
Dark Episode
Compaore ruled for 27 years before being deposed by a popular uprising in 2014 and fleeing to neighbouring Ivory Coast.
Another prominent defendant is Compaore’s Former Right-hand man, General Gilbert Diendere, who once headed the Presidential Security Regiment. Compaore and Diendere faced charges of complicity in murder, harming state security and complicity in the concealment of corpses. Diendere is already serving a 20-year sentence for masterminding a plot in 2015 against the transitional government that followed Compaore’s ouster.
Sankara and the Nation Burkina Faso
Burkina Faso has long been burdened by silence over Sankara’s assassination and many are angry that the killers have gone unpunished.
Sankara, a Marxist-Leninist, was an Army Captain when he came to power in a 1983 coup, at age 33. He is seen as 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 nationalisations and banned female genital mutilation, polygamy and forced marriages.
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