Grace Meng says she will only agree to meet Chinese officials who say they have a letter for her from her husband in the presence of a lawyer and reporters
The wife of the former Interpol president who is being detained in China on bribery charges says she’s been contacted by Chinese diplomats, who have told her they’re holding a letter from him for her.
Grace Meng says, however, that she’ll only agree to meet Chinese officials if a lawyer and reporters are present. She says Chinese officials haven’t responded since she told them that condition.
She says she also asked that the letter from her husband, Meng Hongwei, be given to French police, so they can give it to her. She has been living under French police protection in the French city of Lyon, where Interpol is headquartered, since she reported that her husband went missing while on a trip to China in late September.
“They said my husband wrote a letter to me,” she said in an interview Friday with The Associated Press in Lyon. “They said they can only give it to me alone.”
Grace Meng said the disappearance and suspected slaying of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, wasn’t a factor in her refusal to meet unaccompanied with Chinese officials. However, she made clear that she finds them impossible to trust, calling them “cruel.”
China says Meng Hongwei, 64, is under investigation for graft and possibly other crimes.
