A Finnish court of appeal has reduced the prison sentence of Biafra separatist Simon Ekpa from six years to four years while upholding his convictions for terrorism-related offences.
In its ruling on Thursday, the court upheld Ekpa’s convictions for participating in the activities of a terrorist group and publicly inciting people to commit crimes with terrorist intent.
The 41-year-old has been in custody since November 2024, when he was arrested by Finnish law enforcement authorities.
Ekpa had appealed the September 2025 judgment of the Päijät-Häme District Court, which sentenced him to six years in prison. Prosecutors also appealed, seeking a harsher sentence.
However, the appeal court reduced his sentence, citing circumstances surrounding the offences that it said bore similarities to situations in which grounds for exemption from criminal liability, including civil war, self-defence and necessity, could arise.
According to the appellate court, the district court had accepted the prosecution’s case that Ekpa operated from Finland as the supreme commander of several armed groups in south-eastern Nigeria.
The groups allegedly sought to establish an independent Biafran state, with members carrying out attacks on police stations, government buildings and military roadblocks in pursuit of that objective.
The appeal court said it reviewed the evidence presented by prosecutors and reached the same conclusions as the district court regarding Ekpa’s activities.
During the appeal, however, Ekpa submitted additional evidence in support of his argument that an internal armed conflict was ongoing in south-eastern Nigeria.
He argued that international humanitarian law, rather than Finland’s domestic terrorism laws, should apply because his activities were connected to the conflict and were not driven by terrorist intent.
The court examined the nature of the conflict, the organisation of the armed groups and the intensity of the fighting. It also compared the evidence with legal assessments of the Balkan wars by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
It found that evidence of Nigerian government forces deploying heavy weapons, including armoured vehicles and combat helicopters, supported the argument that an internal armed conflict existed.
The court, however, ruled that the fighting did not meet the legal threshold for a civil war.
Although it rejected Ekpa’s argument that the conflict negated terrorist intent in his actions, the court considered the circumstances relevant to sentencing and reduced his prison term from six years to four years.
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