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OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso (AP) — Burkina Faso's interim government has authorized the exhumation of the supposed grave of assassinated revolutionary leader Thomas Sankara.
The family long has doubted that the Ouagadougou cemetery holds the remains of the revered leader killed in a 1987 coup that brought power to his former best friend, Blaise Compaore.
Compaore was driven from the country by violent protests in October over his bid to remain in power.
Protesters since have been demanding the truth about Sankara — a man whose name people were afraid to speak under Compaore.
Sankara was a Marxist, anti-imperialist revolutionary who in four short years in power doubled the number of children in schools, reduced infant mortality, redistributed land from feudal landlords to peasants and planted 10 million trees that still help shade Ouagadougou, the capital.
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