ABIDJAN: The head of the junta in Burkina Faso has pardoned 21 soldiers convicted of involvement in a failed coup in 2015, according to an official decree seen by AFP on Monday.
The country has been run since September 2022 by military leaders following a coup headed by Capt. Ibrahim Traore.
Traore announced an “amnesty pardon” in December last year for several people convicted over the 2015 attempt to overthrow the transitional government in place after the fall of former President Blaise Compaore.
“The following persons, who have been convicted or prosecuted before the courts for acts committed on Sept. 15 and 16, 2015, are granted amnesty,” stated the decree, issued last week, listing the 21 soldiers. Six officers, including two former unit commanders of the former presidential guard, are on the list alongside 15 non-commissioned officers and rank-and-file soldiers.

They were convicted at a military tribunal in Ouagadougou in 2019 for “harming state security,” murder, or treason.
Two generals considered the masterminds of the failed coup, Compaore’s former chief of staff Gilbert Diendere and head of diplomacy Djibril Bassole, were sentenced to 20 and 10 years in prison, respectively.
They were not part of the amnesty. Those convicted have until June to request a pardon.
To do so, they must “demonstrate a patriotic commitment to the reconquest of the territory” and “express their willingness to participate in the fight against terrorism actively.”
The 21 soldiers pardoned will rejoin the army, which has been fighting extremist groups linked to Al-Qaeda and Daesh for more than 10 years.
However, the decree stipulates that they will not be eligible for compensation or career progression.
Diendere and Bassole tried to oust the transitional government put in place after Compaore was forced out of office in October 2014 by a popular uprising, after 27 years in power.
Loyalist forces put down the attempted coup within two weeks. A total of 14 people died, and 270 were wounded.
The Justice Ministry in December said that some 1,200 people convicted in connection with the coup attempt would be pardoned from Jan. 1.

LONDON: British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Monday that a lack of coordination between UK police and intelligence agencies is partly responsible for a surge in the number of migrants reaching the UK in small boats across the English Channel.
At an international meeting on boosting border security and tackling people-smuggling, Starmer expressed frustration at the difficulty of stopping thousands of people a year risking the dangerous sea crossing from France.
“We inherited this total fragmentation between our policing, our Border Force and our intelligence agencies,” Starmer said as officials from more than 40 countries met in London. “A fragmentation that made it crystal clear, when I looked at it, that there were gaps in our defense, an open invitation at our borders for the people smugglers to crack on.”
Starmer’s center-left government, elected nine months ago, is grappling with an issue that vexed its Conservative predecessors.
Despite law-enforcement cooperation with France and work with authorities in countries further up the route taken by migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East, more than 6,600 migrants crossed the channel in the first three months of this year, the highest number on record.
The opposition Conservatives say the figure shows Labour should not have scrapped the previous government’s contentious – and never-implemented – plan to send asylum-seekers who arrive by boat on one-way trips to Rwanda.
Starmer called the Rwanda plan a “gimmick” and canceled it soon after he was elected in July. Britain paid Rwanda hundreds of millions of pounds for the plan under a deal signed by the two countries in 2022, without any deportations taking place.
Monday’s meeting was addressed virtually by Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni, whose far-right government has opened centers in Albania to hold some asylum-seekers while their claims are processed – a project being closely watched by Starmer’s government.
Meloni said the plan was “criticized at first,” but had “gained increasing consensus, so much so that today, European Union is proposing to set up return hubs in third countries.”
The governments of Albania, Vietnam and Iraq, whose nationals account for a significant number of asylum-seekers in the UK, were also represented.
Starmer, who has said organized people-smugglers should be treated in the same way as terror gangs, has been criticized by refugee groups, and some Labour supporters, for his hard-line approach to irregular migration.
But he said “there’s nothing progressive or compassionate about turning a blind eye to this. Nothing progressive or compassionate about continuing that false hope which attracts people to make those journeys.
“This vile trade exploits the cracks between our institutions, pits nations against one another and profits from our inability at the political level to come together,” Starmer said.
“We’ve got to combine our resources, share intelligence and tactics, and tackle the problem upstream at every step of the people smuggling routes.”