Reburial Ceremony Holds For Thomas Sankara Decades After Assassination

The body of Burkina Faso's revolutionary leader Thomas Sankara was reburied on Thursday alongside 12 of his comrades at the spot where they were assassinated in a coup three decades ago.

The ceremony was attended by Burkina Faso Prime Minister Apollinaire Joachim Kyélem de Tambèla.

Sankara took power in August 1983 as a 33-year-old army captain.

He was dubbed "Africa's Che Guevara" because he was a fiery Marxist-Leninist who chastised the West for neocolonialism and hypocrisy.

He changed the country's name from the colonial-era Upper Volta to Burkina Faso - "the land of honest men" - and implemented several reforms, including vaccination and the prohibition of female genital mutilation.

Sankara was revered by supporters of pan-Africanism and egalitarianism, but his presidency was brief.

A hit squad assassinated him and a dozen other leaders during a meeting of the ruling National Revolutionary Council in the capital, Ouagadougou.

The assassinations occurred on the same day that Sankara's comrade-in-arms, Blaise Compaore, took power.

He went on to rule for 27 years, during which time the death of Sankara was strictly forbidden. Protests from the public forced his resignation in 2014.

Following Compaore's downfall, the 13 bodies were exhumed from a cemetery on the city's outskirts for an investigation.

It resulted in a protracted trial that ended in April 2022 with life sentences in absentia for Compaore and the suspected hit squad leader, as well as a similar sentence for a detained general who was army commander at the time.

The government previously stated that the 13 should be buried "honourably," in light of this trial.