The prosecution of the Ouagadougou High Court on Wednesday (September 21st) requested sentences ranging from seven years in prison to life for the three defendants in the trial of the 1990 assassination of student union leader Boukary Dabo.
Leader of the National Association of Burkinabe Students in the 1990s, at the forefront of protests against then-president Blaise Compaoré, Boukary Dabo, a 7th-year medical student, was kidnapped on May 19, 1990 by armed men .
He was then taken to the premises of the Council of the Entente, the first camp of the former presidential security regiment, where he was tortured to death, then buried in Po, 150 km from the capital.
The prosecution requested Wednesday evening that Gilbert Diendéré be found guilty of
“aggravated unlawful confinement”
and that he be sentenced to seven years in prison.
Other charges such as
"complicity of blow and wounds resulting in death"
and
"concealment of a corpse"
were dropped.
Gilbert Diendéré is already sentenced to life for his role in the assassination of ex-president Thomas Sankara and twelve of his companions, in 1987, in a putsch which brought Blaise Compaoré to power.
Ten years in prison were also required against Colonel Mamadou Bamba, accused of
"complicity in illegal arrest and kidnapping"
for having told soldiers at the time which students were to be arrested after a demonstration.
Finally, life imprisonment was requested against Sergeant Victor Magloire Yougbare, absent from the trial and tried in absentia, for having driven the vehicle transporting the body of the student.
“There will be no truth in this file”
“There are many things that the procedure of this case has obscured. There will be no truth in this file”
, reacted Me Mamadou Sombié, Colonel Bamba's lawyer.
During his testimony at the bar, General Diendéré had for his part indicated that the order
"to remove the students"
had come from the cabinet of the Presidency.
He claims to have only been
"informed of the death of the student whose arrest he did not know"
.
After a procedure opened in 2000, it was not until the fall of the regime of Blaise Compaoré, overthrown by the street at the end of 2014, to see the first indictments in this case, pronounced in January 2017. In 2017, justice announced that it had located the Presumed tomb of Boukary Dabo in Pô, a town housing the commando training center where the men of President Compaoré's ex-praetorian guard were trained.
The verdict is expected overnight from Wednesday to Thursday.
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