By Thiam Ndiaga
OUAGADOUGOU (Reuters) – Burkina Faso leader Paul-Henri Damiba’s planned reconciliation summit of former presidents got off to a rocky start on Friday as two declined to attend and another faced protests outside his house over the participation of former strongman Blaise Compaore.
Compaore, who was ousted in an uprising in 2014 after 27 years in power, returned from exile in Ivory Coast on Thursday to take part in the summit, which is meant to project political unity in the face of spiralling violence by Islamist militants.
But many Burkinabes have blasted Compaore’s return from exile as a free man after he was sentenced in absentia earlier this year to life in prison for complicity in the 1987 murder of his predecessor, Thomas Sankara, during the coup that brought him to power.
Compaore, 71, returned for the summit as part of a deal between Ivory Coast, which has repeatedly refused to extradite him, and Damiba’s government.
Two of the five former presidents invited by Damiba, Isaac Zida et Michel Kafando, declined to attend, sources close to them told Reuters.
Meanwhile, dozens of protesters were holding a sit-in outside the house of Roch Kabore, the president that Damiba’s junta overthrew in January, to demand that he withdraw as well.
There was no immediate response from the government or confirmation of when the summit would start.
At a news conference, lawyers representing the families of Sankara and others killed during the coup demanded that he be arrested.
“This is in defiance of the law,” Bénéwendé Stanislas Sankara told reporters. “The lawyers’ collective … demands purely and simply the execution of the arrest warrant.”
Damiba has touted the meeting as an opportunity to achieve unity and reconciliation in response to rising attacks by militant groups linked to al Qaeda and Islamic State.
He justified the coup in January by citing the inability of Kabore to contain the violence. But his government has so far been unable to slow the militants, who control vast swathes of territory and regularly massacre civilians.
(Additional reporting and writing by Aaron Ross; Editing by Nick Macfie)
