Former Swedish ambassador to China faces criminal investigation over secret Gui Minhai meetings
- Prosecutor says Anna Lindstedt is being investigated over clandestine talks to free bookseller who disappeared from Hong Kong in 2015
- Diplomat is suspected over exceeding her authority by starting negotiations without the knowledge of the foreign ministry
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Sweden’s former ambassador to Beijing could have committed a crime when she organised negotiations aimed at securing the release of detained Chinese-Swedish publisher Gui Minhai without the knowledge of the foreign ministry, a prosecutor said Thursday.
Anna Lindstedt is suspected of having overstepped her authority when she set up a meeting in Stockholm in late January between the publisher’s daughter and businessmen claiming to have connections to the Chinese Communist Party, without telling the ministry.
Gui, a Chinese-born Swedish citizen known for publishing gossipy titles about Chinese political leaders out of a Hong Kong book shop, disappeared while holidaying in Thailand in 2015 before resurfacing in mainland China.
Prosecutor Hans Ihrman told Swedish public radio that Lindstedt, who served as ambassador between 2016 and earlier this year, was under formal criminal investigation.
Swedish ambassador to China investigated for security breaches in Gui Minhai case
Ihrman said she was suspected of “arbitrary conduct when negotiating with a foreign power,” meaning someone acting outside their mandate.
Contacted by AFP, Lindstedt’s lawyer was unavailable for comment Thursday.
The Swedish foreign ministry has said it knew nothing about the meeting nor that the ambassador was even in Stockholm at the time.
Gui Minhai disappeared in Thailand in 2015. Several months later he appeared on Chinese state television confessing to a fatal drink-driving accident from more than a decade earlier.
He served two years in prison, but three months after his October 2017 release he was again arrested while on a train to Beijing while travelling with Swedish diplomats.
Ambassador to China Anna Lindstedt sent back to Sweden after Gui Minhai reports
His supporters and family have claimed his detention is part of political repression campaign orchestrated by Chinese authorities.
Relations between Sweden and China have been strained for several years over the detention of the 54-year-old.
His daughter Angela Gui, who has been actively campaigning for her father’s release, wrote in February on her blog that Lindstedt had invited her to Stockholm in January.
During discussions in the lounges of a hotel in the Swedish capital, in the presence of the ambassador, she was introduced to Chinese businessmen who claimed they could help negotiate her father’s release.
In exchange, Angela Gui said she was told to “stop all media engagement”.
The Chinese embassy in Stockholm said in a statement Beijing has “has never authorised and will not authorise anyone to engage with Gui Minhai’s daughter”.
