On Monday October 25th 2021 the trial is due to begin in Ouagadougou over the 1987 assassination of the Burkina Faso president Thomas Sankara and twelve of his staff and supporters. His widow Mariam Sankara, who has lived in exile in the south of France, and who has rarely returned to the country of her birth, says she is planning to attend the trial. “I expect justice to be done and for the truth finally to be known,” she said. “And I'm not alone, the whole of Burkina is waiting for that.” Indeed, one could say the whole continent.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
For a large number of young Africans, Sankara today symbolises resistance to imperialism and the hope of a better future. His diatribes have been used as slogans by those involved in pan-African movements and his face features in every popular uprising in sub-Saharan Africa. It was also at the heart of the uprising by the people of Burkina Faso in October 2014 which led to President Blaise Compaoré – the man who replaced Sankara in 1987 – being forced to flee the country.
Sankara's own revolution lasted four years, from August 4th 1983 to October 15th 1987. According to a senior figure from Balai Citizen, a movement that played a key role in Campaoré's downfall, Sankara's presidency was “living proof that you can lead an African country in a different way”.
Thomas Sankara criticised the corruption of African elites, he fought against neocolonialism and was opposed to African debt owed to Western powers. He was also ahead of his time as a committed environmentalist and feminist. His passionate speeches, which have been given a new lease of life thanks to the internet, continue to inspire progressive activists on the continent to this day. “In a way, the verdict has already been delivered,” said Fidèle Kientega, one of Sankara's comrades from the earliest days and who has never really got over his death. “It has been given in a magisterial manner by the youth of the whole world who regularly pay homage to him. His [words and deeds] have borne more fruit than one could have expected. Today he is in the Pantheon of great men.” Fidèle Kientega thinks this trial should be yet “one more platform to tell the world what happened”.
Sankara had barely got to the door of the villa before he was shot. Then we went out and they fired at us.
Indeed, we already know virtually everything that happened on the day of the murders, October 15th 1987, and the days leading up to them. Over the years, and especially after the downfall of Compaoré on October 31st 2014, people have talked. In 'Il s’appelait Sankara. Chronique d’une mort violente' ('He was called Sankara. Chronicle of a violent death'), an investigation by journalist Sennen Andriamirado, the sole survivor of the massacre, Alouna Traoré, even drew a diagram of the scene of the crime.
On October 15th 1987, like every Thursday, Sankara met members of his private office in the villa used by his organisation the Conseil National de la Révolution (CNR) as its headquarters. Warrant officer Christophe Saba, Frédéric Kiemdé, Paulin Bamouni Babou, Bonaventure Compaoré, Patrice Zagré and Alouna Traoré were already present. Sankara arrived a little late at 4.30pm in his black Renault 5, which was his official car, escorted by five bodyguards. At 4.35pm he sat down at the table. Alouna Traoré started speaking but very quickly the noise of a car exhaust drowned his voice. Then came the sound of automatic rifles. The seven men got to the floor. They did not yet know it, but outside the president's loyal team – his five bodyguards Emmanuel Bationo, Abdoulaye Gouem, Wallilaye Ouédraogo, Hamado Sawadogo and Noufou Sawadogo, and his driver, Der Somda – had been killed. A gendarme, Paténéma Soré, who had turned up to deliver letters, was also gunned down.
The officials inside the villa heard someone call “come out!”. Sankara got up. “Stay there! It's me they want,” he said. There was a fresh volley of gunfire. “He had barely got to the door of the villa before he was shot. Then we went out and they fired at us,” Alouna Traoré recalled five years later. By 4.45pm a total of thirteen bodies were piled up in the entrance of the villa. As soon as night fell they were hastily buried by prisoners at a cemetery in the capital. “Like dogs,” said an angry Fidèle Kientega.
So we know the circumstances of the murders. We also know the names of the killers: all belonged to Blaise Compaoré's inner circle and were under the orders of his deputy, lieutenant Gilbert Diendéré. We know, too, the identity of the head of the group involved: Hyacinthe Kafando. He became Compaoré's head of security for many years before falling into disgrace for a while, and then later getting elected as a Member of Parliament for Compaoré's party the Congrès pour la Démocratie et le Progrès (CDP).
But we still do not know the most important thing: who gave the orders? For the past 34 years the attention has focussed on Blaise Compaoré himself. This is because it was his men who carried out the attack and the fact that some have since claimed that an order was given to “neutralise” Sankara; and because it was he who benefited from the crime, as he subsequently took power and ruled for 27 years; but attention has also focused on Compaoré, and perhaps especially so, because it has been claimed that he effectively conceded that he gave the orders.
Sankara's widow, his family and his closest colleagues are certainly convinced of Compaoré's guilt. “We don't new further proof because he's admitted it himself,” said Fidèle Kientega. He was referring to the comments that Compaoré made to journalists a few weeks after Sankara's murder when he declared: “It was him or me.” Compaoré's supporters have since claimed that Sankara, who they say had become more authoritarian, was himself preparing a coup d'État to get rid of other leaders of the revolution.
These supporters say the Sankara plot had been planned for the meeting of the Organisation Militaire Révolutionnaire that was due to take place on that evening, October 15th, and that they needed to take pre-emptive action. But Compaoré has always denied ordering Sankara's assassination, claiming that what happened was a regrettable accident. “I arrived [editor's note, at the scene of the killings] at around 6pm,” Compaoré said a few days after the murders. “I was angry with the men responsible for the massacre. But they had proof that a plot against my comrades and me was being planned for 8pm. If I hadn't had this evidence I'd have reacted brutally,” he added.
In a book by Ludo Martens called 'Sankara, Compaoré et la révolution burkinabè', which was written to remove any suspicion from Compaoré, his deputy Gilbert Diendéré said that he had wanted to “arrest” Sankara “before things went too far” at the 8pm meeting, not to kill him. But will Diendéré stick to that story at the trial?
Those close to the murdered revolutionary leader dismiss this theory as inconceivable. They insist that Sankara was informed months earlier that Compaoré was planning a coup, but that he had refused to act. “He didn't want to know about it,” said Sankara's former aide-de-camp Étienne Zongo, shortly before his death in October 2016. Relations between the two men had deteriorated during the course of the revolution in Burkina Faso, and especially after 1985 when Compaoré fell in love with Chantal Terrasson de Fougères, a wealthy Franco-Ivory Coast heiress who was close to the Ivory Coast's president Félix Houphouët-Boigny. Houphouët-Boigny, who feared that the revolution in Burkina would provoke uprisings in the region – and especially his own country – was Sankara's sworn enemy.
For some weeks before the killings a propaganda war had raged in Ouagadougou. Sankara and Compaoré – who was then minister of justice and commanded the revolution's elite troops – were each accused by the other's supporters of the worst outrages. The two men no longer met as often as they had in the past, when “Blaise” used to go and dine with “Thomas”, when he was welcomed like a “brother” by Sankara's parents. “The clash was inevitable,” admit several people who were close to Sankara.
Will the trial – which was due to start on Monday 11th October but at the request of defence lawyers has been postponed for two weeks until October 25th – be able to determine the responsibility of those involved? Fourteen men have been charged: four members of the group that carried out the killing, including Hyacinthe Kafando, some alleged accomplices and those accused of ordering the murders. Blaise Compaoré and Gilbert Diendéré are accused of “attacking state security”, of “conspiracy to murder” and of “concealing bodies”. But only twelve of the accused will be in the dock when the trial eventually starts. Hyacinthe Kafando, who knows a great deal about what went on, is nowhere to be found. He vanished after the investigating judge in the case, François Yaméogo, summoned him for questioning at the end of 2015. It is thought likely that accomplices helped him flee the country.
As for Compaoré, he is living in comfortable exile in neighbouring Ivory Coast where he took refuge in October 2014 with the crucial help of France. It was the French army that allowed him to flee his country when his convoy, which had been heading for Ghana, faced being stopped by protestors in the town of Pô in the south of Burkina Faso, close to the Ghanaian border. The French intervention went down badly in Ouagadougou. “I'd have liked to see Blaise [here] face to face,” said Fidèle Kientega, who accused France of having allowed Compaoré to escape justice.
Since then the former Burkina Faso head of state has become an Ivory Coast national. His lawyers, Pierre-Olivier Sur and Abdoul Ouédraogo, have stated that he will not take part in the trial which they describe as “political”. Guy-Hervé Kam, a lawyer for one of the victim's families, told Jeune Afrique news magazine that this was “practically an admission of guilt”.
One other question that may not be answered during the trial: what involvement did foreign powers have in this assassination? Sankara made many enemies after he came to power in August 1983: these included the autocrats in the region, starting with the Ivory Coast's Félix Houphouët-Boigny and Togo president Étienne Eyadéma Gnassingbé. But the list also included Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi plus the French president François Mitterrand and the French prime minister of the day Jacques Chirac. Sankara had attracted French ire with his diatribes against African debt and the use of the French-backed CFA franc currency in parts of Africa, his criticism of the support that Paris gave to the apartheid regime in South Africa, and his vote at the United Nations in favour of the right to self-determination for the people of New Caledonia, a French territory in the Pacific. Though the socialist Mitterrand and the conservative Chirac were in a government of 'cohabitation' – in other words, they came from different political camps - both saw Sankara as someone who was threatening Franco-African order in the region. The two men issued warnings, even threats, to the Burkina Faso president via people close to him.
During his investigations judge François Yaméogo made some interesting discoveries, such as the presence of French intelligence agents in Ouagadougou on October 16th 1987, the day after the coup d'État. This was confirmed by several witnesses interviewed by the investigative newspaper Courrier confidentiel. But he did not make enough progress in this area and was obliged to wrap up the 'domestic' aspect of the case, while leaving the 'international' side open. In November 2017 President Emmanuel Macron promised that French government archives would be sent to help the investigation and they were indeed sent in three stages; in 2018, 2019 and 2021. But these did not provide the judge with enough certainty to conclude the international part of the case. According to a judicial source most of the documents that were sent were of no interest to the investigators.
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- The original French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter