By Timothy Oyomare
Former Burkina Faso President Blaise Compaore has been jailed for life for his role in the assassination of revolutionary leader Thomas Sankara 35 years ago.
The sentencing of Compaore by a military court on Wednesday crowns a six-month trial of 14 men accused of killing Sankara on October 15, 1987, a prosecution marked by grim testimony and disrupted by a military coup.
Revered among pan-Africanist radicals, Sankara was an army captain aged just 33 when he came to power in a coup in 1983.
The fiery Marxist-Leninist railed against imperialism and colonialism, often angering Western leaders but gaining followers across the continent and beyond.
He and 12 colleagues were gunned down by a hit squad on October 15, 1987, at a meeting of the ruling National Revolutionary Council.
The massacre coincided with a coup that took Sankara’s erstwhile comrade, Compaore, to power.
-AFP