Sweden’s equivalent to CIA is investigating Anna Lindstedt, the Ambassador of Sweden to China, after she was alleged of set up secret meetings without the awareness of the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Anna Lindstedt set up the meeting between Angela Gui, a daughter of a Chinese-born Swedish bookseller jailed in China and two businessmen who told they could help her father to have his freedom back.
Gui Minhai, father of Angela Gui, was known for publishing sensational tomes about the private lives of China’s elite and maybe this reputation of his caused him to be currently held in Chinese custody.
Since her father was arrested, Angela Gui has been fighting and campaigning for her father’s release.
On 13 February 2019, Angela posted on her Medium blog about “a very strange experience in Stockholm” that she confronted two weeks ago.
She wrote that she was contacted by Anna Lindstedt, the Ambassador of Sweden to China in mid-January 2019 about the possibility of her father’s release. Anna asked her to travel to Stockholm around 24 January to meet with some businessmen whom Anna said could help.
So, in the morning of 24 January, Angela arrived at Skavsta Airport and met with the Ambassador and two businessmen at the hotel where Angela checked in after she landed. Then, Angela was brought to another hotel where the meeting was held.
According to her post, she explained the bizarre experiences and conversations she had during the meeting. For example, she was implied not to leave the suite by the businessmen because they need her to “be around as much as possible” and when she needed to go to the bathroom, there would be somebody following her to the bathroom.
Angela revealed the uneasiness that occurred in her mind when she was asked about her personal life that had nothing to do with her father’s release and no one would explain the reason why she had to be here.
“There was a lot of wine, a lot of people, and a lot of increasingly strange questions. But because Ambassador Lindstedt was present and seemingly supportive of whatever it was that was going on, I kept assuming that this had been initiated by the Swedish Foreign Ministry,” Angela wrote.
Moreover, Angela claimed that one of the businessmen told her that it is possible her father might be released but she had to stay quiet and she needed to “stop all media engagement” because now ‘the Chinese’ were very angry with her.
The businessman also threatened her by claiming the damage of the Ambassador’s career.
“You care about Anna (The Ambassador), right? If you keep talking to the media it’ll damage her career. You don’t want her to come to any harm, do you?” Angela wrote.
Angela also told that the Ambassador tried to convince her to cooperate with the businessmen because she (the Ambassador) believed “commissioning two businessmen to negotiate on a sensitive case” will be more effective because “the negotiations handled by the Foreign Ministry ‘didn’t seem to make much progress.”
Following week after Angela left Stockholm, she rang to officials at the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and they told that they did not aware of this meeting and not even aware “the Ambassador was in the country.”
Anna Lindstedt has been recalled to Stockholm on the same day Angela posted her story and is under investigation by the foreign affairs ministry.
