The International Community Condemn Burkina Faso’s Coup
Blaise Compaore, the former president, had wanted extend his 27-year rule last year as he was coming to the end of his second five-year term. Despite constitutional limits introduced in 2005, the country's legislature was going to assess a proposed amendment that would allow Mr Compaore to run for re-election in the following month. He would have been in power for another five years but the opposition feared that it would mean that he stayed in power for longer seeking re-election more than once. The former president was 36 when he seized power in a 1987 coup after Thomas Sankara, his former friend, was removed from power and assassinated. On October 31, he resigned as president and fled to Cote d'Ivoire with his family. Amnesty's report from January this year says the family then went to Morocco before returning to Cote d'Ivoire in mid-December last year.