Iconic West African leader Sankara reburied in Burkina Faso

By SAM MEDNICK and ARSENE KABORE
Associated Press

OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso (AP) — Burkina Faso’s revolutionary leader, Thomas Sankara, has been reburied, eight years after his body was exhumed as part of an investigation. Sankara and 12 others were gunned down in the capital, Ouagadougou, during a 1987 coup and buried hastily. Their bodies were only allowed to be dug up in 2015, after the ousting of President Blaise Compaore. Sankara, a charismatic Marxist leader, came to power in 1983 after he and Compaore led a leftist coup that overthrew a moderate military faction. In 1987, Compaore turned on his former friend in a coup in which he seized power and then ruled the country with an iron fist until he was ousted in an uprising.