Daily Times

A court in Burkina Faso on Tuesday ordered ex-president Blaise Compaore and nine others to pay more than a million dollars in damages to relatives of revolutionary leader Thomas Sankara and aides who were assassinated in 1987. The order comes after a trial last month that sentenced the group to long jail terms, ending a case that afflicted the Sahel state for 34 years. A former comrade-in-arms of Sankara, Compaore took power during a putsch on the day of the assassination, ruling until 2014, when he was toppled by mass protests and fled abroad. Judge Urbain Meda, presiding over a military court in the capital Ouagadougou, ordered payment of 807.5 million CFA francs ($1.3 million / 1.2 million euros) to relatives of the 12 people who were gunned down alongside Sankara. The Sankara family was awarded a symbolic one franc. The award is indicative of “the moral and economic harm” the families suffered, Meda said.