July 7. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The former president of Burkina Faso Blaise Compaoré returned to the country on Thursday after spending seven years in exile in the Ivory Coast after being overthrown in 2014 after a wave of mobilizations and popular protests.
Compaoré landed at an airbase in the capital, Ouagadougou, along with his wife around 2:00 p.m. local time. It is expected that this Friday, July 8, at the invitation of the military junta that governs the country, he will participate in “national reconciliation” talks.
Small groups of people have gathered at the gates of the air base to receive the president of Burkina Faso between 1987 and 2014. According to local media, once he landed, he boarded a Burkinabe army helicopter to leave the facilities. .
At the moment the format or duration of his return has not been set, although some sources close to the former president have emphasized that “it is not a visit, it is a definitive return”, although “it is his family, and more specifically his sister, the one who handles this matter”, has settled.
A Burkina Faso military court sentenced Compaoré to life in prison in April for his role in the 1987 assassination of revolutionary leader and icon of Pan-Africanism Thomas Sankara during the coup in which he was ousted.
The Military Justice decided to reopen the case in February 2020 based on a series of documents declassified by France related to Compaoré’s participation in Sankara’s death, accusations that he has always denied.
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