Seven executed for plot

Press, 14 June 1984, Page 11

Seven executed for plot

NZPA-AFP Ouagadougou Seven people — five soldiers and two civilians — have been executed in Upper Volta after having been convicted by a court martial of plotting to overthrow the Government of the west African State late last month, an official source said vesterdav.

In addition, five people implicated in the abortive plot were condemned to terms of forced labour, ranging from 15 years to life, by the court martial.

Fourteen others were acquitted due to lack of irrefutable proof of their guilt, the source said.

One of the five soldiers executed was a former colonel and former Mayor of Ouagadougou who has been presented by the authorities as the main instigator of the plot.

The executions were the first in Upper Volta since Captain Thomas Sankara and his fellow Army officers seized power in a coup on August 4. 1983.

The first official confirmation of the planned coup, scheduled for Mav 28 but forestalled by the arrest of many of its instigators the day before, came in a statement by Upper Volta's National Revolutionary Council read on Ouagadougou Radio. Reliable sources then said that the plotters had intended. if their coup had been successful, to dissolve Upper Volta's local revolutionary defence committees, abolish the revolutionarv

people's courts and declare a wide-ranging political amnesty.

Although the people convicted and executed were not top-ranking Upper Voltan political figures, the police said on Sunday that the plotters had planned to bring in a leading figure living in an unspecified neighbouring country to head their government. Upper Volta has borders with Mali. Ivory Coast. Ghana, Togo. Benin and Niger.