Captain Thomas Isidore Noël Sankara

Jonathan led a strange coalition of ‘democracy enforcers’ in Ecowas alongside Burkina Faso’s President Blaise Compaoré an improbable enthusiast of free elections given his history as the beneficiary of a putsch which killed his childhood friend Thomas Sankara and as a political and business ally of Liberian warlord Charles Taylor who is awaiting a verdict after his long trial for war crimes at the Special Court for Sierra Leone in the Hague...

Recent examples of inflammatory rumours seen by Africa Confidential include doctored photos purporting to show unarmed civilians shot dead by UN troops and tracts portraying Gbagbo as the inheritor of the legacies of Patrice Lumumba Thomas Sankara and Kwame Nkrumah...

But Compaoré's accession to power predated any elections: he has been in charge since the 15 October 1987 murder of his close friend and ally Captain Thomas Sankara the charismatic instigator of social change in the former Upper Volta (AC Vol 50 No 5)...

As Ouagadougou greets its guests at this year's long-established Pan-African film festival the 21st Festival Panafricain du Cinéma (FESPACO) President Blaise Compaoré is getting ready for his re-election in November next year (AC Vol 46 No 24) two decades after the murder of Thomas Sankara...

President Thomas Sankara was murdered when Compaoré (then also a captain) launched his coup d'état in October 1987 (AC Vol 28 No 4)...

He and Blaise Compaoré were close long before the bloody coup of October 1987 when Captain Thomas Sankara was brutally killed...

He successfully controlled fresh unrest in the army in October around the 20th anniversary of the assassination of his forerunner Captain Thomas Sankara – a crime in which Compaoré was implicated...

The opposition is keenly commemorating the murder of the popular leader Thomas Sankara in Compaoré’s coup and of the journalist Norbert Zongo...

Paris has backed Compaoré since his 1986 coup which involved the murder of his childhood friend the radical Thomas Sankara who irritated France...

The only significant opposition now unrepresented in parliament consists of a few faithful followers of the late Thomas Sankara the President tortured and killed by Compaoré's troops in 1987...

Burkina government efforts to quieten things down via a 'day of reconciliation' in April met a stony refusal from the family of President Thomas Sankara tortured and killed during Compaoré's coup and members of the anti-Compaoré Collectif contre l'Impunité...