Burkina ex-president to snub trial on Sankara assassination
- Thomas Sankara took power in the impoverished Sahel state in 1983, renaming the country from the colonial-era Upper Volta to Burkina Faso, which means ‘land of the honest men’
- Sankara was shot dead on October 15, 1987, aged just 37, during a putsch led by Blaise Compaore, a former friend
