Autopsy shows Burkina leader Sankara was 'riddled with bullets': lawyer

Ouagadougou (AFP) - An autopsy on the supposed remains of Burkina Faso's iconic former president Thomas Sankara, who was killed in a 1987 coup, showed he was 'riddled with bullets", a lawyer for his family said Tuesday.

"In terms of the (gunshot) wounds, what was found in relation to Thomas Sankara's body is really mind-boggling. You could say he was purely and simply riddled with bullets," Ambroise Farama, one of the lawyers representing Sankara's family, told reporters.

Nearly three decades after his death a set of remains believed to be those of Sankara and 12 colleagues were exhumed from a cemetery in the capital Ouagadougou in May as part of an investigation into their deaths

"Concerning the others, one or two gunshot wounds were found here and there. But as far as Thomas Sankara was concerned, there were more than a dozen all over the body, even below the armpits," Farama said.

The lawyer said the position of the bullet holes showed he had " most probably raised his arms".

There were bullet holes "everywhere, in the chest, the legs, everywhere," he added.

Farama stressed the family was still waiting for the results of DNA tests to confirm the body was that of the former army captain dubbed Africa's "Che Guevara", but said "there is every reason to believe" this was the case.

Sankara was killed and hastily buried in a coup that brought Blaise Compaore, Burkina Faso's leader of 27 years, to power.

His family had to wait until Compaore's ouster in a popular uprising last year for their requests for an investigation into the revolutionary leader's death to get the official nod.

At least eight people, some of them soldiers who took part in a failed September coup by Compaore loyalists, have already been charged over his assassination, another of the family's lawyers revealed.

"Eight or nine people have been charged", said lawyer Benewende Stanislas Sankara (no relation to the late president), adding they included "soldiers from the ex-RSP".

The RSP was the acronym of the elite presidential guard behind an abortive coup last month. The regiment has since been disbanded.