23, February 2023
Thomas Sankara reburied in Burkina Faso 0
Burkina Faso’s revolutionary leader, Thomas Sankara, was reburied Thursday, eight years after his body was exhumed as part of an investigation.
Sankara’s body, and those of the 12 people who died with him, were reburied at the site of his assassination, which has since become a memorial for Sankara featuring a life-size statue of the former leader pumping his fist in the air.
Soldiers and community leaders paid tribute during a ceremony Thursday, some posing for pictures by Sankara’s coffin. All the coffins were draped in Burkina Faso flags with a photo beside them.
Sankara and the others were gunned down in the capital, Ouagadougou, during a 1987 coup and buried hastily, their bodies only allowed to be dug up in 2015, after the ousting of former President Blaise Compaore.
Sankara, a charismatic Marxist leader with a reputation as “Africa’s Che Guevara,” came to power in 1983 at the age of 33 after he and Compaore led a leftist coup that overthrew a moderate military faction. But in 1987, Compaore turned on his former friend in a coup in which he seized power and then ruled the country for 30 years.
Last year, Compaore, who now lives in Ivory Coast, was tried in absentia and convicted of complicity in their murders. A Burkina Faso military tribunal sentenced him to life imprisonment. Compaore’s right-hand man, Gilbert Diendere, and former spy chief Tousma Yacinthe Kafando were also given life sentences. Eight other people were found guilty of a range of charges including giving false testimonies and complicity in undermining state security.
While Sankara’s family was happy that he was finally laid to rest, they said the place of burial was like a slap in the face because of the horrors that occurred there.
“That place is painful for us to put our feet there. A lot of people were tortured there and crimes committed there and murders,” his younger brother Paul Sankara told The Associated Press by phone from the United States where he lives. The family asked the government to bury him elsewhere but was told it was at the army’s discretion since he was a soldier.
The West African nation has been struggling with a jihadi insurgency linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group that has killed thousands and displaced nearly 2 million people and sowed division among the population leading to two coups last year. The current junta leader, Capt. Ibrahim Traore, has been likened by some to Sankara, as an anti-imperialist pan-African leader, and is using the reburial to increase support, analysts say.
“With undertaking a symbolic state funeral for Sankara, Traore aims to boost his image by appealing to the collective memory of the young revolutionary leader that still shapes society in Burkina Faso,” said Mucahid Durmaz, senior analyst at Verisk Maplecroft, a global risk intelligence firm.
Source: AP
21, March 2023
Chad jails more than 400 rebels for life after death of former ruler 0
More than 400 rebels in Chad were handed life sentences on Tuesday following the death of former ruler Idriss Deby Itno, who was killed in 2021, a public prosecutor told AFP.
After a mass trial, they were sentenced for “acts of terrorism, mercenarism, recruitment of child soldiers and assaulting the head of state,” said Mahamat El-Hadj Abba Nana, prosecutor for the capital N’Djamena.
He did not give a detailed figure for those jailed, saying only that “more than 400 were sentenced” to life, while 24 other defendants were acquitted.
The trial opened last month behind closed doors at Klessoum prison, 20 kilometres (12 miles) southeast of the capital.
In early 2021, the country’s main rebel group, the Front for Change and Concord in Chad (FACT), launched an offensive on the north of the country from bases in Libya.
On April 20, the army announced that Marshal Deby, Chad’s iron-fisted ruler for the previous three decades, had died from wounds sustained in the fighting.
His death was announced just a day after he had been declared victor of a presidential election that gave him a sixth term in office.
He was immediately succeeded by one of his sons, General Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno, who took the helm at the head of a 15-member military junta.
‘A masquerade’
Several defendants were also ordered to pay damages of more than $32 million to the state and $1.6 million to the ex-president’s family, said FACT lawyer Francis Lokoulde, who suggested there would be an appeal.
“It’s a masquerade that follows no law, no convention”, said FACT leader Mahamat Mahdi Ali.
“All that comes from a willingness to criminalise our struggle. The verdict is a non-event,” he said.
Defence lawyers had protested at the very short notice after the mass trial had been announced just days before it started on February 13.
Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno had promised to hold free elections within 18 months, but that deadline was extended for another two years.
Protests last October to mark the initially promised end to military rule met with a deadly crackdown.
The Chadian authorities first put the death toll in the capital at around 50, before updating that figure to 73 deaths. Opposition groups say the number is higher.
The Geneva-based World Organization against Torture (OMCT) accused the Chadian authorities of summary executions and torture.
A total of 262 people were then handed terms of between two and three years after a trial in the notorious Koro Toro prison, isolated in the desert 600 kilometres from N’Djamena.
The remote location and proceedings drew condemnation from international human rights groups.
Human Rights Watch not only denounced the mass trial but also the murders, forced disappearances and torture that preceded it.
The main leaders of Chad’s opposition now live in hiding or in exile, even though the junta lifted a suspension of several opposition parties in January.
Despite criticism of his authoritarian rule, the elder Deby was a key ally in the West’s anti-jihadist campaign in the unstable Sahel, particularly due to the relative strength of Chad’s military.
Source: AFP