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Sweden’s ambassador to China Anna Lindstedt returned to Stockholm on Wednesday to meet Swedish foreign ministry officials. Photo: Swedish embassy

Ambassador to China Anna Lindstedt sent back to Sweden after Gui Minhai reports

  • Embassy says she returned to Stockholm on Wednesday to meet foreign ministry officials
  • It comes after reports emerged she was involved in arranging meeting between bookseller’s daughter and Chinese businessmen

The Swedish embassy in Beijing says its ambassador has been sent back to Stockholm after reports emerged that she was involved in arranging a meeting between Gui Minhai’s daughter and Chinese businessmen said to be trying to secure the release of the bookseller.

The embassy on Thursday said Anna Lindstedt had returned to Stockholm on Wednesday to meet Swedish foreign ministry officials.

A Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs spokesman said an internal investigation was under way into “information concerning incorrect action in connection with events taking place at the end of January”.

“As part of this investigation, the ambassador is currently in Stockholm for meetings with the [ministry],” the spokesman said.

In January the ministry said Lindstedt would be leaving the post in Beijing to become Sweden’s “ambassador for the 2030 Agenda”, a role promoting sustainable development goals. “Once the internal investigation has been concluded, we will return to the issue of this appointment,” the spokesman said.

The ministry statement came after Angela Gui, the daughter of detained Swedish book publisher Gui Minhai, said on Wednesday that Lindstedt had helped to arrange for her to meet the Chinese businessmen in a bid to organise a visit to see her father.

China denies it met daughter of detained bookseller Gui Minhai and offered her a visa in exchange for her silence

Angela Gui wrote on online publishing platform Medium that Lindstedt asked her to travel to Stockholm on January 24 because there was “a new approach” to her father’s case.

She was introduced to two businessmen who offered to help secure her father’s release from prison in China but that she would have to keep “quiet” about it for a month.

One of the businessmen said he could arrange a visa for her to visit her father, and the two businessmen told her that they had already started to negotiate in her father’s case – action taken without Angela Gui’s prior knowledge.

She said one of the men asked her why she had not told him everything she knew on the case.

“You have to trust me, or you will never see your father again,” Angela Gui quoted the man as saying.

Angela Gui accused the businessmen of being manipulative and said the meeting took place without the knowledge of the Swedish foreign ministry. Photo: AFP

She accused the businessmen of being manipulative and said the meeting took place without the knowledge of the Swedish foreign ministry.

“I’m not going to be quiet in exchange for a visa and an arbitrary promise that my father ‘might’ be released. Threats, verbal abuse, bribes, or flattery won’t change that,” she wrote.

Gui Minhai, 54, a Chinese-born naturalised Swedish citizen, was embroiled in the mysterious saga of missing booksellers in Hong Kong.

Sweden’s King Carl XVI Gustaf pulls out of a trip to mainland China and Hong Kong as Stockholm presses for release of detained bookseller Gui Minhai

Between October and December 2015, five associates of Causeway Bay Books and Mighty Current publishing house vanished, one after another, from Thailand, Hong Kong and mainland China.

Mighty Current published racy books on the lives of Chinese leaders, and the men’s unexplained disappearance raised fears they had been taken away by agents from mainland China because of the books’ content.

All five later reappeared in custody on the mainland and were investigated for their “illegal business” of delivering about 4,000 banned books from Hong Kong to 380 customers across the border since October 2014.

Gui, owner of the store and the publishing house, was released in October 2017 from a sentence he was serving for his involvement in a fatal 2003 hit-and-run accident. He was rearrested three months later over allegations of leaking state secrets abroad.

Sweden has criticised Beijing’s handling of Gui’s case but China insists it will “allow no interference” in the issue.

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Sweden envoy sent back to Stockholm
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