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A10 WORLD NEWS
Monday 8 october 2018

Wife says Interpol officer sent knife image as danger signal

By JOHN LEICESTER to look after her. She said
GILLIAN WONG the call never came and
Associated Press she does not know what
LYON, France (AP) — The happened to him.
wife of a leader of interna- Of the knife image, she
tional police agency Inter- said: “I think he means he is
pol made an impassioned in danger.” She said he was
plea to the world Sunday in China when he sent the
for help bringing her miss- image.
ing husband to safety, say- “This is the last, last message
ing he sent her an image from my husband,” she
of a knife before he disap- said. “After that I have no
peared in China and she call and he disappeared.”
thinks it was his way of say- She said he regularly trav-
ing that he was in danger. eled back and forth be-
Grace Meng detailed tween Lyon and China for
the last messages she ex- his job. He had been on a
changed with her hus- three-country tour, to Nor-
band, Interpol executive way, Sweden and Serbia,
committee president Meng for Interpol before his latest
Hongwei, to reporters as trip back to China, she said.
part of her unusual appeal. Before he shared the knife
Meng is a senior public se- image, she sent him a pho-
curity official in China, and to of two animal figurines,
regularly traveled between one of a bear and another
Beijing and Lyon, France, of a horse, meant to repre-
where Interpol is based. Grace Meng, the wife of missing Interpol President Meng Hongwei, who does not want her face sent their two children; one
His wife’s plea underscored shown, consults her mobile phone in the lobby of a hotel in Lyon, central France, where the police of them loves horses, she
how China’s system of agency is based, on Sunday Oct. 7, 2018. Associated Press said, and the other “looks
shady and often-arbitrary like the bear.”
detentions can ensnare known publicly, threatened lieve what it said. nese Communist Party un- She said they had been in
even a Chinese official to tarnish Beijing’s image as “This is political ruin and der President Xi Jinping’s daily contact during his trip
with international standing, a rising Asian power. The fall!” she wrote in a text rule. Some of them might before he went missing in
leaving loved ones unin- one-sentence announce- message to the AP. “I can’t even have been pursued China.
formed and in a panic. ment about his being the believe because the rule of by Chinese authorities un- Xi, China’s most power-
In news that could con- focus of an investigation, law (in) China is his lifelong der Meng’s watch. ful leader since Mao Ze-
firm her fears: China an- issued when it was nearly pursuit.” Such targets, who have dong, has overseen a harsh
nounced less than an hour midnight in China, said only Earlier Sunday, at an emo- been subject to arbitrary crackdown on civil society
after she spoke Sunday that Meng was in the cus- tional press conference in detention and made unex- that is aimed at squelch-
that Meng was under in- tody of party investigators. Lyon, Grace Meng spoke plained disappearances, ing dissent and activism
vestigation on suspicion The disciplinary organ of for the first time about his include pro-democracy among lawyers and rights
of unspecified legal viola- China’s ruling Communist disappearance. activists, human rights law- advocates.
tions, making the vice min- Party said in a brief state- “From now on, I have gone yers, officials accused of He has also used a popular
ister for public security the ment on its website that from sorrow and fear to the graft or political disloyalty and wide-ranging anti-cor-
latest high-profile official Meng was “suspected of pursuit of truth, justice and and the estimated one mil- ruption campaign to boost
to fall victim to a sweeping violating the law and is cur- responsibility toward his- lion ethnic minority Muslims supervision of the party and
crackdown by the ruling rently under the monitoring tory,” she said, her voice who have vanished into as a powerful weapon with
Communist Party. and investigation” of Chi- trembling with emotion. internment camps in the which to purge his political
Interpol then announced na’s new anti-corruption “For the husband whom I country’s far west. opponents.
that Meng had resigned as body, the National Supervi- deeply love, for my young In a sign of her nervous ap- Meng is China’s vice min-
president, effective imme- sion Commission. children, for the people of prehension, Meng’s wife ister of public security as
diately. It did not say why, The statement was the first my motherland, for all the would not allow report- well as president of the In-
or provide details about official word on the fate wives and children, so that ers to show her face, say- ternational Criminal Police
Meng’s whereabouts or of 64-year-old Meng since their husbands and fathers ing she feared for her own Organization, best known
condition. French judicial officials said will no longer disappear.” safety and the safety of her as Interpol. The agency
Meng’s unexplained disap- he was missing Friday. His The appeal by Meng’s children. She was accom- said Saturday it has used
pearance in China, which wife first learned about the wife for justice and fairness panied to the hotel where law enforcement channels
had prompted the French party statement from The echoed pleas from the she held her press confer- to inquire with China about
government and Interpol Associated Press; she said families of scores of people ence by two French police Meng’s status, citing con-
to make their concerns she was struggling to be- who fell afoul of the Chi- officers who were assigned cerns for his safety.q