A Ouagadougou court has sentenced former Burkinabe président Blaise Compaoré to life imprisonment for the murder of the revered Thomas Sankara.

The long-awaited verdict brings to close a six-month trial of Sankara who was assassinated on October 15, 1987.

Military prosecutors had requested for a 30-year sentence for Compaoré, who was being tried alongside thirteen others.

Sankara, a revered pan-Africanist leader, was murdered alongside 12 others by a hit squad during a putsch that brought his friend and comrade-in-arms Compaoré to power.