Wife says Interpol officer sent knife image as signal

LYON, France — The wife of Interpol’s president made an impassioned plea Sunday for help in bringing her missing husband to safety, saying she thinks he sent an image of a knife before he disappeared in China as a way to warn her he was in danger.

Grace Meng detailed the last messages she exchanged with her husband, Interpol President Meng Hongwei, to reporters as part of her unusual appeal. Meng is China’s vice minister for public security, and regularly traveled between Beijing and Lyon, France, where Interpol is based.

His wife’s plea underscored how China’s system of shady and often-arbitrary detentions can ensnare even a senior public security official with international standing, leaving loved ones uninformed and in a panic.

In news that could confirm her fears: China announced less than an hour after she spoke Sunday that Meng was under investigation on suspicion of unspecified legal violations, making him the latest high-ranking official to fall victim to a sweeping crackdown by the ruling Communist Party.

Interpol then announced that

Meng had resigned as president, effective immediately. It did not say why, or provide details about Meng’s whereabouts or condition. He was elected to lead the international police agency in 2016 and his term was not set to end until 2020.

Meng’s unexplained disappearance in China, which had prompted the French government and Interpol to make their concerns known publicly, threatened to tarnish Beijing’s image as a rising Asian power. The one-sentence announcement about his being the focus of an investigation, issued when it was nearly midnight in

China, said only that Meng was in the custody of party investigators.

His wife first learned about the party statement from The Associated Press; she said she was struggling to believe what it said.