The Popular Revolutionary Tribunals (French: Tribunaux populaires de la Révolution, TPR,[1] alternatively the People's Revolutionary Tribunals) were a system of courts, through which the workers and peasants of Burkina Faso were intended to be able to participate in and monitor the trials of criminals in the new Marxist–Leninist and pan-Africanist government of Thomas Sankara and his National Council for the Revolution.
[3] Sankara came to power in what was then the Republic of Upper Volta through a military coup in 1983, and immediately set about to transform society through what he dubbed the "Democratic and Popular Revolution" (French: Révolution démocratique et populaire).
[1] Sankara himself self-critically admitted that the tribunals often were used as occasions to settle private scores, rather than deal revolutionary justice.
[7] Among those tried by the Popular Revolutionary Tribunals was Colonel Saye Zerbo, military ruler and President of Upper Volta between 1980 and 1982, who was sentenced to 15 years in prison in May 1984 but released already in August 1985.
[8] The Popular Revolutionary Tribunals, along with the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, were abolished in 1987 after Thomas Sankara's death at the hands of a military coup led by Blaise Compaoré, his former friend and colleague.