Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt

The decisions of the pre-trial hearing, published on April 13, 2021, confirm the indictment of the main defendants. The case has now been referred to the Military Tribunal for due process. We demand that Blaise Compaoré be extradited to Burkina Faso and that France make the archives relating to the assassination of Thomas Sankara available to the Burkinabe justice system.

The way is thus open to organize the trial. However, no date has been set. According to our latest information, Burkina Faso’s military justice system is still considering whether first to hear the trial of the Sankara case or the appeal in the 2015 putsch trial.

We urge the justice system to start with the Sankara case. The families of the victims of October 15, 1987 putsch have been waiting for justice to be done for more than 34 years, for the remains of their parents to be returned so that they can be buried and mourned, and have closure.

The announced opening of the trial does not mean we forget that the investigation into the alleged international conspiracy remains open following the disjunction operated between the Burkinabe justice system and the events that took place.

We now know that not everything has been done on the French side to transmit “documents produced by French administrations during the Sankara regime and after his assassination, (...) protected by national secrecy” as promised by President Emmanuel Macron in Ouagadougou in November 2017. In particular we ask that the archives of President François Mitterrand and his cabinet as well as those of Prime Minister Jacques Chirac, then Prime Minister, and his cabinet, covering the period before and after the assassination of Thomas Sankara, protected by national defense secrecy, be transmitted to the Burkinabe justice.

We urge the democratic forces and people of Côte d’Ivoire to pressure their government to extradite Blaise Compaoré, who has done so much harm to their country, without delay.

This trial is a historic event of international significance. We ask the authorities that the trial be filmed for posterity, history, memory and education of the youth of today and in the future.

We thank all those who, through their commitment, made it possible for this trial to take place. It is the fruit of a long struggle over several decades. It will bring the perpetrators of the assassination of Thomas Sankara and other victims of October 15, 1987 to judgement. This is a great step towards truth and justice.

But the struggle to obtain the truth about the reality of the international conspiracy that preceded the assassinations of October 15, 1987 continues. Pressure must be increased throughout all the instances in world so that all the archives that shed light on this affair, regardless of their country of origin or their current classification, are quickly made available to the Burkina Faso justice system.

Done in Ouagadougou, Bobo Dioulasso, Banfora, Nairobi, Dakar, Niamey, Paris, Lièges, Turin, Munich, Barcelona, Sabadell, Las Palmas, Ottawa, Toronto, Nimes, Rennes, Toulouse, Grenoble, Ajaccio, Montpellier on April 14, 2021

The international network justice for Sankara justice for Africa.

Contact: contactjusticepoursankara at gmail.com