STOCKHOLM — In Sweden, a high-profile trial set to wrap up on Friday has captured the nation’s attention.
Given the details of the case, that’s no surprise: It involves China, a Swedish bookseller, a secretive meeting in a luxury hotel and — for the first time in more than two centuries — an ex-ambassador on trial for allegedly overstepping her mandate.
On Friday, a Stockholm court will rule on whether Sweden’s former ambassador to Beijing, Anna Lindstedt, was guilty of “arbitrariness during negotiations with a foreign power” at a January 2019 meeting she arranged in Stockholm between two businessmen with links to China and the daughter of jailed Swedish publisher Gui Minhai. The daughter, Angela Gui, later said that during the meeting she had come under pressure to cease campaigning for her father’s release.
According to Swedish law, such a charge can be brought against Swedish citizens who, without the required authority, allow themselves to be used as an agent of a foreign power in a diplomatic issue concerning Sweden. It hasn’t been brought against a Swedish diplomat since 1794 and, if found guilty, Lindstedt could face up to two years in prison.
Prosecutors say Lindstedt’s actions have put Sweden’s relations with China at risk. Lindstedt denies any wrongdoing and said in a police interview she was merely facilitating discussions as part of her job as a diplomat. During a hearing in June, she called the case “unreal and Kafkaesque.”
Experts say his real crime in the eyes of Chinese authorities was publishing books critical of Chinese leaders through a company he ran in Hong Kong.
“I have not done what the prosecutor accuses me of,” she said. “It is incomprehensible that this has taken on such proportions.”
The case is the latest twist in a story of rapidly deteriorating diplomatic relations between Sweden and China over the detention of Gui, who has been held in China since 2015 and was jailed for 10 years on spying charges in February this year.
Experts say his real crime in the eyes of Chinese authorities was publishing books critical of Chinese leaders through a company he ran in Hong Kong.
The meeting arranged by Lindstedt in January 2019 brought together Chinese businessman Kevin Liu and his associate John Meewella on one side and Angela Gui on the other.
Readouts of interviews with Lindstedt, Angela Gui and Meewella by police show that a key agenda item was a job offer Liu planned to make to Angela Gui. Also hanging in the air was a vaguely articulated commitment from Liu to use influence he claimed to have with Chinese officials to help secure the release of her father.
The meeting, held at the Sheraton Hotel in Stockholm, quickly unravelled, the interviews show.
The discussions of a job offer initially went quite well. But things got heated when, according to Angela Gui, Meewella began to make a number of demands of her, including that she cease her public campaign for her father’s release, which — among other things — has seen her speak before a U.S congressional committee.
The meeting ended with an upset Angela Gui declining the job offer. She said she later contacted officials at the foreign ministry in Stockholm to raise concerns about the meeting, only to be told that it had not been sanctioned by anyone other than Lindstedt.
Officials at the foreign ministry quickly raised the alarm about the meeting with Swedish police, fearing some kind of breach of security.
In December 2019, the Swedish public prosecution service brought the charge of “arbitrariness during negotiations with a foreign power” against Lindstedt.
“She has exceeded her mandate and has therefore rendered herself criminally liable,” prosecutor Hans Ihrman said at the time.
Police beside missing person notices of Gui Minhai in Hong Kong in 2016 | Anthony Wallace/AFP via Getty Images
Friday’s verdict will be the second time in a month that Swedish public prosecutors have grabbed the headlines. In mid-June, the outcome of a 34-year investigation into the killing of Prime Minister Olof Palme in 1986 dominated the news.
As with that case, the twists and turns of the Lindstedt investigation have left Swedes slightly bemused and local media scrambling to explain the ins and outs of what has happened.
Friday’s verdict, due at 11 a.m. local time, will be closely watched given the unusual nature of the case as well as the recent focus here on Gui and deteriorating relations with China more broadly.
Gui was awarded a literature prize in 2019 in absentia, and when the Swedish minister of culture attended the award ceremony, the Chinese embassy called it a “serious mistake” and threatened reprisals.
“We demand that Gui Minhai be released” — Swedish Foreign Minister Ann Linde
When the 10-year sentence against the Chinese-born publisher was announced earlier this year, Foreign Minister Ann Linde said he must immediately be allowed to return to Sweden, which granted him citizenship in the 1990s.
“We demand that Gui Minhai be released,” she said.