Burkina Faso: Thomas Sankara's family absent at his burial

The family of former Burkinabe president Thomas Sankara, announced Sunday evening in a statement that they would not attend the burial of his remains.

Burkinabe government had announced that the body of Burkina the nation's revered revolutionary leader Thomas Sankara is to be buried alongside his 12 comrades, at the spot where in 1987 they were assassinated, the country's ruling junta said last Friday.

The family of Sankara had expressed their wish to see the remains of their relative buried "elsewhere" other than the memorial site they tagged as “conflicting and controversial”.

The bodies of Thomas Sankara and his twelve comrades were first buried in a cemetery on the outskirts of Ouagadougou and exhumed on 25 May 2015 for the purposes of legal proceedings.

Thomas Sankara, a pan-African icon, came to power in a coup in August 1983 and was reportedly killed on 15 October 1987 by his number two, Blaise Compaoré, who remained in power until a popular uprising led to his downfall in 2014.

In April, the military court in Ouagadougou sentenced him in absentia to life imprisonment for his role in the assassination of Thomas Sankara and his companions, after a six-month trial.