Autopsy says ex-Burkina Faso leader was shot about 10 times

The family is still waiting for DNA results to confirm the body’s identity. Calls from Sankara’s family for an investigation were blocked during Compaore’s rule. “We can say he was purely and simply riddled with bullets”, Ambroise Farama, one of the lawyers representing Sankara’s widow Mariam, told reporters.

Compaore was ousted in a popular uprising last year after 27 years in power.

Seen as Africa’s Che Guevara, the anti-imperialist revolutionary was hastily buried in a 1987 coup.

Burkina Faso’s interim government confirmed Wednesday that presidential and parliamentary elections initially set for October, but delayed by a failed coup, would go ahead on November 29.

Voters will be presented with two ballots – one for choosing members of parliament, the other for choosing among 14 candidates competing in the first round of the presidential election.

He said that traces of clothing found in the tomb led him to believe strongly that the body was Sankara’s. “But as far as Thomas Sankara was concerned, there were more than a dozen all over the body, even below the armpits”, Farama said.

He inspired many by changing the name of the former French colony from Upper Volta to Burkina Faso, meaning “the land of upright men”, and replaced the fleet of luxurious ministerial Mercedes with cheap Renault 5 cars.

“Eight or nine people have been charged”, said lawyer Benewende Stanislas Sankara (no relation to the late president), adding they included “soldiers from the ex-RSP”.

The exhumation started in May but the autopsy report was delayed during last month’s seven-day coup.

Authorities want to give Sankara a presidential burial with an official ceremony, he said.