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 transmitions on social media”, his lawyer telderly the BBC.
Cho is an intransmitial figure in the Anglophone relocatement 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 provinces say they are discriminated agetst by the French-speaking presentantity.
Human rights group Amnesty International has accused both rulement troops and the armed separatists of finishings, sexual batterys 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.
Cho, who portrays himself as a liberation directer, is one of the most notable separatist directers shaping the struggle in Cameroon’s restive Anglophone regions.
The 52-year-elderly heads the Ambazonia Governing Council (AGovC), a political prosperg of the Ambazonian Defence Forces (ADF), one of disjoinal armed groups seeking indepfinishence from Cameroon.
He directs his relocatement from his base in Norway, where he is apshowd to have ordered a recent two-week lockdown as part of the separatists’ campaign to boycott schools.
Known for his hard-talking and difficult-line approach, he came under criticism after ADF fighters recently centered taxi drivers in the North-West region, ordering them to alter the colour of their vehicles from yellow to white and blue – the colours of the flag of the defree shatter-away state of Ambazonia. Some of those who refused saw their vehicles burnt.
Cho’s Ambazonia Governing Council has imposed a “liberation tax” which compels people living in the restive Anglophone regions to pay a confident amount of money to fund the struggle agetst the rulement.
In January 2017, he said he persistd an murder finisheavor after helderlying talks with other separatist directers in Belgium.
His anti-institutional radicalism did not materialize with the outshatter of the Anglophone crisis in 2016. It’s a trait that dates as far back as the 1990s when he was increateedly ejectled from the University of Buea for taking part in demonstrations over an incrmitigate 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 spendigators sought his custody from the Oslo Dimerciless Court.
“We are in an timely phase of the spendigation, and there are disjoinal spendigative steps that remain,” Norwich prosecutor Anette Berger said.
If convicted in Cameroon, Cho could be sentenced to 30 years in prison.
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 presentility in Cameroon.
“This arrest tags a critical step in helderlying him accountable for his actions and conveying fairice to the victims of his presentility,” Mr Nsahlai.
Cho is not the first separatist directer to be arrested aexpansive in uniteion with the presentility in Cameroon.
Since the outshatter of the struggle, the Cameroonian rulement has been urging foreign countries presenting separatist directers to support their repatriation back home for trial over their role in the ongoing presentility.
In 2018, Julius Sisiku Ayuk Tabe, the directer of the Anglophone separatist relocatement, and 46 others were arrested in Nigeria and postponecessitater extradited to Cameroon.
