Simon Ekpa, a well-known pro-Biafra separatist agitator, was freed by Finnish police on Thursday after being detained and interrogated for several hours.
WITHIN NIGERIA had reported that Finnish authorities arrested Ekpa. The police escorted the separatist out of his apartment in Lahti.
Ekpa was later released on Thursday evening after the police allegedly arrested him for a suspected crime in Finland.
The Finnish Central Criminal Police confirmed Ekpa’s release on Thursday, according to HS reports.
The police stated that the arrest of the pro-Biafra agitator after their operation in Lahti was connected to the ongoing preliminary investigation.
“The person being questioned today is suspected of a crime. We will return to the title on Friday,” Tommi Reen from the Central Criminal Police told HS during a phone interview.
An official from the Finnish Embassy in Abuja who requested anonymity when contacted earlier confirmed Ekpa’s arrest to newsmen.
“It is our understanding that he is currently in police custody in Finland,” the official who is not authorised to speak to the press stated.
“According to information available to us, the image is verified by Helsingin Sanomat, a Finnish newspaper; in it, Ekpa is seen being escorted out of his home in Lahti by plainclothes Finnish police”, the official volunteered.
Before his eventual arrest on Thursday, Nigerians all over the world have signed a petition appealing to the Finnish government, Nigerian Government and the European Union to arrest Ekpa, the brain behind the sit-at-home order in the South-East.
Ekpa, a self-acclaimed disciple of the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, Nnamdi Kanu, in had repeatedly ordered the people of the South-East to observe a sit-at-home and asked them to boycott the country’s general elections billed for Saturday.
His repeated sit-at-home order has been marked by bloodshed and destruction of lives and properties in the region by its enforcers.
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