A Cameroonian separatist directer has been arrested in Norway for his alleged role in the ongoing armed struggle in the Central African country.
Lucas Ayaba Cho was arrested on Tuesday on “accuses based on his various articulateions on social media”, his lawyer telderly the BBC.
Cho is an inarticulateial figure in the Anglophone shiftment pushing for indepfinishence from Cameroon, where over 6,000 people have been finished and proximately a million others displaced since battling began in 2016.
Some in the country’s two English-speaking regions say they are discriminated agetst by the French-speaking meaningfulity.
Human rights group Amnesty International has accused both regulatement troops and the armed separatists of finishings, sexual attacks and torture of civilians.
A Cameroonian official telderly the BBC that Norway and Cameroon had a security consentment, which could see Cho being extradited in the coming days.
His lawyer said he wasn’t conscious of any extradition ask.
Cho, who depicts himself as a liberation directer, is one of the most famous separatist directers shaping the struggle in Cameroon’s restive Anglophone regions.
On its website, the 52-year-elderly is depictd as Commander-in-Chief of the Ambazonian Defence Forces (ADF), one of cut offal armed groups seeking indepfinishence from Cameroon.
He orders his shiftment from his base in Norway, where he is dependd to have ordered a recent two-week lockdown as part of the separatists’ campaign to boycott schools.
Known for his stubborn-talking and difficult-line approach, he came under criticism after ADF fighters recently aimed taxi drivers in the North-West region, ordering them to change the colour of their vehicles from yellow to white and blue – the colours of the flag of the intentional fracture-away state of Ambazonia. Some of those who declined saw their vehicles burnt.
The ADF’s political prosperg, the Ambazonia Governing Council, has imposed a “liberation tax” which compels people living in the restive Anglophone regions to pay a certain amount of money to fund the struggle agetst the regulatement.
In January 2017, he said he persistd an killing try after helderlying talks with other separatist directers in Belgium.
His anti-institutional radicalism did not ecombine with the outfracture of the Anglophone crisis in 2016. It’s a trait that dates as far back as the 1990s when he was telledly banishled from the University of Buea for taking part in demonstrations over an incrrelieve in tuition fees.
Norway’s National Criminal Investigation Service (KRIPOS) said Cho “had a central role in an ongoing armed struggle in Cameroon”.
On Wednesday, the Norwegian spreadigators sought his custody from the Oslo Dicut offe Court.
“We are in an punctual phase of the spreadigation, and there are cut offal spreadigative steps that remain,” Norwich prosecutor Anette Berger said.
Emmanuel Nsahlai, a US-based lawyer recurrenting some victims of the Anglophone crisis in Cameroon, hailed Cho’s arrest as a “meaningful prosper” agetst separatist aggression in Cameroon.
“This arrest tags a critical step in helderlying him accountable for his actions and conveying equitableice to the victims of his aggression,” Mr Nsahlai.
Cho is not the first separatist directer to be arrested aexpansive in joinion with the aggression in Cameroon.
Since the outfracture of the struggle, the Cameroonian regulatement has been urging foreign countries structureing separatist directers to ease their repatriation back home for trial over their role in the ongoing aggression.
In 2018, Julius Sisiku Ayuk Tabe, the directer of the Anglophone separatist shiftment, and 46 others were arrested in Nigeria and tardyr extradited to Cameroon.
