Hong Kong authorities have received confirmation from Chinese security officials that a bookseller whose disappearance three weeks ago raised international concern is in the mainland.
Hong Kong police said late on Monday that they received notice from Guangdong province’s public security department that Lee Bo, who is a British passport holder, was “understood” to be in mainland China.
Guangdong officials were replying to a request by Hong Kong police for information on Lee.
He and four other people linked to a Hong Kong publishing company and its bookshop had gone missing in recent months.
The publishing firm specialised in books banned in mainland China for being critical of its communist leadership.
Lee’s case in particular raised alarm bells because it raised suspicions that Chinese security agents crossed into Hong Kong to abduct him.
According to local news reports, he was last seen at his company’s warehouse and did not have his travel permit for mainland China with him, but days after he went missing he called his wife to say he was in Shenzhen, the city next to Hong Kong.
Police said in a brief statement that Guangdong officials also forwarded to them a letter from Lee to the Hong Kong government, with handwriting that Lee’s wife confirmed was his.
Police said the letter was similar to one Hong Kong media reported on Monday, which he purportedly wrote to his wife to tell her he “voluntarily” went to the mainland to assist authorities with an investigation, details of which he didn’t disclose.
Lee’s disappearance prompted the British foreign office to register its deep concern over the missing men.
The British foreign secretary Philip Hammond said the suspected abduction of Lee would be an “egregious breach” of Hong Kong’s autonomy by China.
“It would not be acceptable for somebody to be spirited out of Hong Kong in order to face charges in a different jurisdiction. It is an essential part of the settlement in Hong Kong that it has its own judicial system and it is solely responsible for trying offences that occur in Hong Kong,” he said last week.
News that Lee was in mainland China comes after the Chinese government released video footage of one of his missing colleagues and Swedish citizen, Gui Minhai, “confessing” to a hit-and-run on the mainland.
On Sunday night, a tearful Gui was shown on state broadcaster CCTV saying he turned himself in to Chinese authorities in October for his involvement in a fatal hit-and-run incident in the city of Ningbo in December 2003.
“I am taking my legal responsibilities, and am willing to accept any punishment,” state news agency Xinhua quoted him as saying.
Gui’s daughter told the Guardian on Monday that she could neither deny nor confirm the crime her father admitted to, but dismissed the possibility that he had voluntarily returned to China, saying he was seized against his will while in Thailand in October.
Swedish Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Katarina Byrenius Roslund told the Guardian that Stockholm takes “a very serious view of the fact that the Chinese authorities have still not given us any clarification of what has happened.”
She added that the Swedish embassy in Beijing had been allowed on Saturday to visit another Swedish citizen who she would not name. The man is believed to be Peter Dahlin, a human rights activist who is being held by police in China.
Tom Phillips and Oliver Holmes contributed to this report
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