Swedish bookseller 'snatched by Chinese agents from train'

Daughter says Gui Minhai was taken off train as he travelled to Beijing with group of diplomats

Tom Phillips in Beijing
Mon 22 Jan 2018 12.00 GMT

A Swedish publisher believed to have been abducted by Chinese agents after riling Beijing with his books about the peccadilloes of the Communist party’s elite has allegedly been snatched for a second time while travelling to Beijing by train with a group of European diplomats.

Supporters and relatives of Gui Minhai, a Hong Kong-based bookseller who mysteriously vanished from his Thai holiday home in October 2015, had hoped he was on the verge of freedom after reports that he was “half free” and living under surveillance in the eastern Chinese city of Ningbo.

However, those hopes were dashed on Monday by claims that he had again vanished, this time while taking a train to Beijing for medical treatment with two Swedish diplomats.

Angela Gui, the bookseller’s UK-based daughter, told the Guardian she was “very saddened” by the latest twist in her father’s story. “This was precisely what wasn’t supposed to happen,” she said.

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