Thomas Sankara
Burkina Faso’s iconic leader, Thomas Sankara, described as Africa’s “Che Guevara”, was the commander of the Commando Training Centre in Po, in 1976, where he met Blaise Compaore. Together with other “like minds”, they formed a secret organization called the “Communist Officers’ Group”.
Thomas Sankara was assassinated on 15 October 1987, during a coup execution masterminded by Blaise Compaore and carried out by an armed group with twelve other officials in Ouagadougou.
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Deterioration in relations with neighbouring countries and accusation of him jeopardizing foreign relations with former colonial power France and neighbouring Ivory Coast were reasons given for his assassination.
A week before his assassination, Sankara gave a speech marking and honouring the 20th anniversary of Che Guevara’s October 9, 1967 execution. He also declared: “While revolutionaries as individuals can be murdered, you cannot kill ideas.”
Decades after, Sankara’s assassination is still under investigation. The French government is also a suspect in the case. So far, they have declined co-operation to get to the root of the assassination.
According to Mariam Sankara’s lawyers in 2015, autopsy revealed that Sankara’s body was “riddled” with “more than a dozen” bullets.
His former colleague and confidant, Blaise Compaore, who took over as president of Burkina Faso after his murder is generally thought to have ordered his assassination. It is also very interesting to note that former Liberian warlord Prince Johnson while testifying before Liberia’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2008, said his one-time ally and Ex-Liberian president Charles Taylor also played a key role in Sankara’s murder.
