Police seize book publisher on train, even while he’s in diplomatic custody

A Hong Kong-based BEIJING — book publisher with Swedish citizenship who was secretly spirited to China and held in custody for two years, igniting international controversy, has disappeared again in dramatic fashion snatched from a train bound for Beijing under the eyes of two Swedish diplomats.

The bookseller, Gui Minhai, became a symbol of the Chinese government’s determination to smother criticism from abroad when he was one of five Hong Kong booksellers who disappeared in 2015, and then resurfaced in China in police custody.

Gui was accused by Chinese state news media outlets of publishing books that slurred Communist Party leaders.

Gui was formally freed from detention last October. But he has been kept in China and forced to report regularly to police, his daughter, Angela Gui, said by telephone from Britain, where she is a graduate student.

Then on Saturday, Gui vanished again.

Gui was sitting on a train bound for Beijing, accompanied by two diplomats from the Swedish Consulate in Shanghai, Angela Gui said. As the train neared Beijing, plainclothes police officers boarded at a station and led Gui away.

Chinese officials told Swedish diplomats that Gui was suspected of sharing secret information with Swedish diplomats and of meeting them illegally. Angela Gui said she did not see how it could be unlawful for her father to meet a Swedish diplomat.