Suspects on trial over plot to kill ‘Africa’s Che Guevara’

THE trial of 14 people accused of plotting to assassinate the man known as “Africa’s Che Guevara” began yesterday, more 34 years after he was shot dead.

President Thomas Sankara was an army captain and Pan-african orator who seized control of Burkina Faso from corrupt elites in the 1980s.

He was killed at 37 in the capital, Ouagadougou, with 12 others by a hit-squad in 1987. The dictator Blaise Compaoré, who has been accused of masterminding his assassination, went on to rule the landlocked west African nation for almost three decades.

“It is important to all these families,” Mariam Sankara, his widow, told the court. “This trial is needed so that the culture of impunity and violence that still rages in many African countries, despite the democratic facade, stops indefinitely.”

Sankara’s policies and rhetoric made him a threat to the Françafrique, a shadowy network of business and political connections that have kept Paris one of the foremost powers in Africa since independence.

His promotion of women’s rights, education and hard stance against Western financial institutions has made him an icon for many Africans.

Under Mr Compaoré, nation-building projects stalled and parasitic rule became the norm, eventually contributing to the social disintegration and jihadist incursions seen across the Sahel region today.

The former president and his former head of security, General Gilbert Diendéré, face charges of complicity in murder, harming state security and complicity in the concealment of corpses.

“What the victims and I are expecting to gain in this trial is truth and justice, because so far there are contradictory versions about what really happened,” Prosper Farama, one of the lawyers for the victims, said. “Soldiers need to understand once and for all that the power belongs to the people and that putschs are not legitimate.”

Mr Compaoré, who rejects allegations that he orchestrated the killing, has been in exile in Ivory Coast since 2014 and will be tried in absentia.

His lawyers have denounced it as a “political trial” flawed by irregularities and insisted he enjoyed immunity as a former head of state.

Many Burkinabes believe that France played a role in Sankara’s murder.

In 2017, President Emmanuel Macron said he would declassify government documents concerning the killing. Some have reportedly been sent to Ouagadougou but no details are public.