Dubbed the "African Che Guevara," Thomas Sankara led a revolution in the former Upper Volta, reinventing the state as Burkina Faso. Even though he was murdered only years later, his influence lasts until today.
OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso (AP) A military court in Burkina Faso on Monday started the trial of 14 people including former President Blaise Compaore for the killing of influential leftist leader Thomas Sankara, who was ousted as president by Compaore in a 1987 coup.
On Friday Burkinabe President Roch Marc Christian Kaboré laid a wreath at the Thomas Sankara memorial and unveiled a bust at the University that bears his name in Ouagadougou, in the presence of his widow Mariam.
Burkina Faso’s former president Thomas Sankara was assassinated 34 years ago in a military coup bringing an end to a charismatic Marxist revolutionary widely known as ‘Africa’s Che Guevara’. Immediately after Sankara’s murder, his wife Mariam Sankara and their two children Philippe Sankara and Auguste Sankara fled to Burkina Faso in 1987. Thomas Sankara seized […]