A Finnish court of appeal has reduced the prison sentence of Biafran political activist, Simon Ekpa, from six years to four years, while upholding his convictions for participating in the activities of a terrorist group and publicly inciting people to commit crimes with terrorist intent.
In its ruling on Thursday, the appeal court upheld the September 2025 judgment of the Päijät-Häme district court on the convictions but reduced the sentence after considering the circumstances surrounding the offences.
The court said the circumstances bore similarities to situations in which grounds for exemption from criminal liability, including civil war, self-defence and necessity, could be considered.
Ekpa, 41, has remained in custody since his arrest by Finnish law enforcement authorities in November 2024. He challenged the district court’s judgment, while prosecutors also appealed, seeking a longer prison sentence.
According to the appeal court, the district court had accepted the prosecution’s argument that Ekpa operated from Finland as the supreme commander of several armed groups in south-eastern Nigeria.
The groups were alleged to have pursued the establishment of an independent Biafran state, with members carrying out attacks on police stations, government buildings and military roadblocks in furtherance of that objective.
The appeal court said it reviewed the evidence presented by the prosecution and reached the same conclusions as the district court regarding Ekpa’s activities.
However, Ekpa introduced fresh evidence during the appeal to support his claim that an internal armed conflict was taking place in south-eastern Nigeria.
He argued that international humanitarian law, rather than Finland’s domestic terrorism laws, should govern his case because his activities were linked to the conflict and lacked terrorist intent.
To assess the argument, the court examined the nature of the fighting, the organisation of the armed groups and the intensity of the hostilities. It also compared the evidence with legal assessments of the Balkan wars by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
The court found that evidence of Nigerian government forces deploying heavy weapons, including armoured vehicles and combat helicopters, supported the claim that an internal armed conflict existed in the region.
It nevertheless ruled that the fighting did not reach the legal threshold required to qualify as a civil war.
Although the court rejected Ekpa’s argument that the conflict negated terrorist intent in his actions, it took the circumstances into account when determining his sentence, resulting in the reduction from six years to four years.
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