STOCKHOLM (Reuters) -Sweden’s foreign minister called on China to release Swedish citizen Gui Minhai from jail on Friday, following a visit to Beijing, continuing a long diplomatic stand-off between the two countries over the Chinese-born bookseller.
Gui, a Hong Kong-based publisher of books critical of China’s communist leaders, was handed a 10-year prison term by Beijing in 2020 for illegally providing intelligence overseas.
Swedish Foreign Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard, in a post on X, said she had raised the case with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi during her visit.
“Our stance remains firm: Gui Minhai must be released and reunited with his family,” Malmer Stenergard wrote.
A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson, responding to the Swedish foreign minister’s remarks, said China handled Gui’s case in accordance with the law.
“We firmly oppose any country, any organisation, or any individual interfering in China’s judicial sovereignty in any way,” Lin Jian told a regular press conference on Friday.
China’s foreign ministry said on Thursday that the jailed publisher was a Chinese national.
Gui, 61, was first abducted in the Thai beach resort of Pattaya in 2015 before surfacing in Chinese detention. He was released in 2017 and detained again by the mainland police in 2018, while with Swedish diplomats on a Beijing-bound train.
A court in the eastern Chinese city of Ningbo that sentenced Gui said he had asked to have his Chinese citizenship reinstated.
Sweden at the time said Gui had not asked to have his Swedish citizenship revoked and reiterated demands for his release.
(Reporting by Anna Ringstrom; Additional reporting by Joe Cash in Beijing; editing by Terje Solsvik and Alex Richardson)
