Sweden probing its envoy to China over 'threatening' meeting

Young journalists club

News ID: 35457
Publish Date: 13:31 - 15 February 2019
TEHRAN, Feb 15 - Sweden's ambassador to China is under internal investigation over a meeting she arranged between the daughter of a detained Swedish publisher and two Chinese businessmen who she says threatened her father.

Sweden probing its envoy to China over 'threatening' meetingTEHRAN, Young Journalists Club (YJC) - Ambassador Anna Lindstedt returned to Stockholm on Wednesday to meet with officials from the foreign affairs ministry, the Swedish Embassy in Beijing said by phone. Lindstedt is not under criminal investigation.

The ministry later confirmed that Lindstedt's departure was related to meetings she arranged between Angela Gui, the daughter of detained Swedish book publisher Gui Minhai, and the two businessmen.

"The ambassador has acted incorrectly in the sense that the foreign ministry had no knowledge that the meetings took place," spokeswoman Catherine Johnsson told The Associated Press. She said the internal investigation was aimed at getting "an overall picture of what has happened," and that "as far as the action of the ambassador is concerned, we must wait for what the inquiry will come up with."

Angela Gui published an account Wednesday in which she described the meetings as "strange." She wrote on Medium, an online publishing platform, that the businessmen threatened her after initially offering to help secure her father's release from prison in China.

Gui Minhai, a naturalized Swedish citizen, co-owned a Hong Kong store which sold gossipy books about Chinese leaders.

Gui, 53, went missing in 2015 from his seaside home in Thailand, turning up months later on Chinese television saying he had turned himself in for an alleged 2003 drunken driving accident in which a female college student was killed.

Several of Gui's colleagues from his Hong Kong publishing house also went missing in quick succession, sparking suspicions that mainland security forces were seeking to snuff out independent voices in the semi-autonomous city.

Gui was released in October after completing a two-year sentence, but committed to remaining in Ningbo, where he was born, until an investigation was completed into charges of running a business illegally.

Source: AP

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