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Burkina Faso’s ex-president Blaise Compaore has returned to the country’s capital Ouagadougou on Thursday after spending nearly eight years in exile.
Compaoré, who was sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment in April by a military court in his country, he was received by the head of state as part of the national reconciliation,” a source close to the Burkinabe government told
Compaore, 71, flew in from Ivory Coast, where he has been living, for a summit of ex-presidents with the country’s new strongman, Lieutenant-Colonel Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba, who was sworn in as president earlier this year following a coup.
Compaore’s plane landed at the military base in the Burkinabe capital, while dozens of his supporters awaited his arrival at Ouagadougou’s main international airport.
It is the first time the ex-president has set foot on home soil since he was forced into exile in neighbouring Ivory Coast in October 2014, after violent popular riots broke out against his plans to remain in power after serving as president for 27 years.
Recall that Compaore had seized power in a coup in 1987, on the same day that Burkina’s revolutionary leader Thomas Sankara — his former comrade-in-arms — was gunned down by a hit squad.
His return home on Thursday is not a permanent one. He has been invited to stay for a few days by Damiba, the leader of a coup in Burkina Faso in January.
Meanwhile, during his stay, he will reside in a state villa in which President Roch Marc Christian Kaboré, who was overthrown in January, was placed under house arrest, according to the source.
Along with the other remaining former presidents of Burkina Faso, Compaore is due to take part in a meeting to “accelerate national reconciliation” in the face of the jihadist attacks that have been plaguing Burkina Faso since 2015 and have multiplied in recent months.
In April, Compaore was sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment for his role in the assassination of his predecessor Sankara in 1987.
On April 6, he was sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment after a six-month trial before the military court in Ouagadougou for his role in the assassination of his predecessor Thomas Sankara in a coup that brought him to power that year.
Blaise Compaoré is a Burkinabé former politician who was president of Burkina Faso from 1987 to 2014. He was a top associate of President Thomas Sankara during the 1980s, and in October 1987, he led a coup d’état during which Sankara was killed.