Finnish prosecutors on Friday announced the indictment of a man for inciting terrorism online, identified by media reports as Nigerian separatist leader Simon Ekpa. Finland’s National Prosecution Authority disclosed 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 alleged offenses occurred in the city of Lahti between 2021 and 2024 and are tied to the suspect’s efforts to establish Nigeria’s Biafra region as an independent state. While the prosecution authority did not disclose the name of the accused, Finnish public broadcaster YLE identified him as Ekpa.

Ekpa—who claims to lead the Biafra Republic’s government in exile—was detained in November. According to the prosecution authority, he remains in custody and has denied the charges.

As a self-proclaimed leader of a faction of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Ekpa is pivotal to the movement 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, where he held a position on a public transport committee.

Following Ekpa’s arrest, Finnish authorities sought to remand four additional individuals on suspicion of financing his activities. However, on Friday, the prosecution authority announced that the charges against these four others had been dropped due to insufficient evidence.

Ekpa has previously been the subject of multiple fact-checks by AFP for spreading false claims and disinformation during his independence campaigning.