THIAM NDIAGA BURKINA FASO'S former president Blaise Compaore was sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment for complicity in the 1987 murder of his predecessor Thomas Sankara in a coup, a military tribunal ruled on Wednesday. The charismatic Marxist revolutionary Sankara was gunned down in the West African nation's capital Ouagadougou at the age of 37, four years after he took power in a previous putsch. Two of Compaore's former top associates, Hyacinthe Kafando and Gilbert Diendere, were also sentenced to life imprisonment. All three have previously denied involvement in Sankara's death along with eleven other defendants accused of involvement in…