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Burkina Faso: Intl arrest warrant out for ex-leader Compaore
Posted On Dec 22 2015
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OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso (AP) A Burkina Faso justice official says a military court has issued an worldwide arrest warrant for former President Blaise Compaore for the assassination of the country’s revolutionary leader.
Captain Thomas Sankara, Father of the Revolution and President of Burkina Faso (1983-1987) was assassinated on 15 October 1987, during the coup that brought Blaise Compaore to power.
The sources said the arrest warrant against the former president, who has been living in exile in Cote d’Ivoire since the fall of his regime in October 2014, was issued in early December, Xinhua reported.
Sankara’s family’s lawyer, Stanislas Benewende Sankara, who isn’t related, said Monday “The state of the remains didn’t allow the laboratory to certify any DNA results”. His admirers referred to him as Africa’s Che Guevara and it was he who changed the country’s name from Upper Volta to Burkina Faso, which roughly translates as “land of the upright people”.
A police lab in the southern French city of Marseilles performed the testing on the remains, which are part of a probe into the killing of the man dubbed Africa’s “Che Guevara”.
Mr Sankara’s family said recently that an autopsy has found that his body was “riddled with bullets”.
Earlier this month, authorities also brought charges against General Gilbert Diendere, a former Compaore chief of staff, for his suspected role in the death of Sankara. “Proceedings are following their course”.
Any possible transfer of Compaore from Ivory Coast to the judiciary of Burkina Faso, may depend on ties between the two countries.
It had been hoped that the DNA tests would confirm that the remains were those of Sankara, whose death certificate said he died of “natural causes”. The political leader of that rebellion, Guillaume Soro, is now speaker of Ivory Coast’s parliament and has recently been accused of seeking to support September’s failed coup in Burkina Faso on the basis of recorded conversations leaked onto the Internet.
