Burkina Faso: a soldier acknowledges the facts during the trial of the assassination of Thomas Sankara

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A soldier admitted on Tuesday the facts of “attack on state security” and told the details of the assassination of Thomas Sankara in 1987. He is the first of the accused to speak before the military court of Ouagadougou, which judges the alleged assassins of “the father of the Burkinabè revolution”.

The day after the reopening of the trial for the assassination of the “revolutionary” president of Burkina Faso, Thomas Sankara, a member of the commando team acknowledged, Tuesday, October 26, the facts of “attack on state security” and recounted the details.

This soldier, Yamba Élisée Ilboudo, said that on October 15, 1987, the day of the coup d’état during which Thomas Sankara and 12 of his companions were killed, he was “at the home of Blaise Compaoré”, brought to power by the putsch.

>> Long format: Thomas Sankara, an African hero

“They coldly shot President Sankara”

It was at Blaise Compaoré that “Hyacinthe Kafando, who commanded us as head of security, asked me to start a vehicle to go to the Council of the Entente”, the seat of the National Council of the Revolution where s The killing took place, he said. Arrived on the spot, Kafando and “Maïga, who was driving Blaise Compaoré’s vehicle, got out and fired in disorder”, affirmed at the bar the first class soldier, now 62 years old, without indicating the first name. of the last.

Whoever claims to have remained in his vehicle, without firing, then recounts the details of the assassination. After the first shots he saw Thomas sankara “come out of the meeting room, hands up, ask what’s going on”. “It was Hyacinthe Kafando and Maïga who crossed paths with him. I don’t know who shot President Sankara first. He fell on his knees before tipping over on his left side,” he said.

He admitted the facts of “complicity in an attack on state security”, but denied the premeditation, assuring that he had not participated in a preparatory meeting for these events. “I didn’t know we were going to do a coup, let alone take someone’s life,” he said.

“They coldly shot President Sankara who came out with his hands in the air and unarmed,” said Mr. Ferdinand Nzapa, the lawyer for the Sankara family, believing that he was the “only accused to be very cooperative “.

Before the start of the interrogation, the court listened to audio and video files dating from 1987 in which Blaise Compaoré justifies the events of October 15, resulting, according to him, from “fundamental differences that have arisen for a year on operational questions of the revolutionary process. “.

Absent during the trial

In one of the files, Compaoré, who had participated in the 1983 coup d’état that brought Thomas Sankara to power – of whom he was a close friend – presents him as a “traitor to the revolution which led an autocratic power” and “staff”. “The other comrades had decided to dismiss him” or to force him to “resign”, he adds, justifying the “need for a rectification”. Sankara’s right-hand man, Blaise Compaoré has always denied having ordered the assassination.

Twelve of the 14 accused are present, including General Gilbert Diendéré, 61, one of the main army chiefs during the 1987 putsch. But Blaise Compaoré, who lives in Côte d’Ivoire, is absent, as is the former Chief Warrant Officer Hyacinthe Kafando, on the run.

Blaise Compaoré, ousted from power in 2014 by the street, is accused of “complicity in assassinations”, “concealment of corpses” and “attack on state security”. On Tuesday, the court granted a request from defense lawyers, demanding the release of the defendants who had been imprisoned two days before the start of the trial.

Eleven of them will benefit from this provisional freedom. Only General Diendéré is kept in detention because he is already serving a 20-year prison sentence for an attempted coup in 2015.

With AFP