Finnish prosecutors announced on Friday that a man has been charged with inciting terrorism online, who has been identified in media reports as Simon Ekpa, a Nigerian separatist leader.
The National Prosecution Authority of Finland stated that it had charged “a Finnish individual in a case involving suspected public incitement to commit crimes with terrorist intent and participation in the activities of a terrorist group.”
The statement revealed that the alleged offences took place in the city of Lahti between 2021 and 2024 and were linked to the suspect’s attempts to establish Nigeria’s Biafra region as an independent state.
Although the prosecution authority did not disclose the name of the accused, Finnish public broadcaster YLE confirmed his identity as Simon Ekpa, the separatist leader.
Ekpa, who claims to lead the government in exile for the Biafra Republic, was detained in November. According to the prosecution authority, he remains in custody and has denied the charges against him.
He is widely known as a self-proclaimed leader of a faction of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), a group advocating for the independence of Nigeria’s southeast, a region that experienced a devastating civil war in the late 1960s.
The dual Finnish-Nigerian national has also served as a local representative for Finland’s conservative National Coalition Party in Lahti, north of Helsinki, where he participated on a public transport committee.
Following Ekpa’s arrest, Finnish authorities sought to remand four other individuals in custody on suspicion of financing his activities. However, on Friday, the prosecution authority announced that the prosecutor had decided to drop the charges against these four individuals due to insufficient evidence.
In recent years, Ekpa has been the subject of several fact-checks by AFP concerning false claims and disinformation associated with his campaigning for independence.
