The wife of Interpol chief Meng Hongwei, who disappeared mysteriously after returning to China last month, said Friday that she wasn’t sure he is still alive, according to a report.
Grace Meng told the BBC that her husband was the victim of “political persecution” in China, where he has been detained on bribery charges after he left his job in France for a visit on Sept. 25.
“I’m not sure he’s alive. They are cruel. They are dirty … they can do anything, I can’t imagine. No limit,” she told the British broadcaster, adding that she has been receiving threatening phone calls.
“A certain phone call asked me: ‘No words, just listen. Two teams for you.’ The two teams target me. In France,” she said.
Meng also said she has been contacted by Chinese diplomats who have told her they’re holding a letter for her from her husband.
“They said my husband wrote a letter to me,” she said in an interview Friday with the Associated Press in Lyon, where the international police agency is headquartered. “They said they can only give it to me alone.”
Meng, who is living under police protection, said she’d only agree to meet Chinese officials if a lawyer and reporters are present — but added that Chinese officials had not responded since she informed them of that condition.
She reported her husband missing late last month after he sent her a cryptic WhatsApp message saying, “Wait for my call,” followed by an emoji of a knife, according to The Guardian.
After French authorities launched a probe and Interpol appealed to Beijing for information, the police agency received its chief’s resignation.
On Oct. 7, Chinese authorities announced that Weng was in their custody. The next day, Beijing’s Ministry of Public Security said Meng was being investigated for corruption.
“(Meng) insisted on taking the wrong path and had only himself to blame (for his downfall),” the country’s top law enforcement official, Zhao Kezhi, was quoted as saying in a statement, CNN reported.
Meng was China’s vice minister of public security while also leading Interpol, and a longtime Communist Party insider with decades of experience in the country’s vast security apparatus.
He appears to be the latest high-ranking official to fall victim to a sweeping anti-corruption crackdown that observers say is a thinly veiled purge to root out those opposed to Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Meng is likely in a new form of custody called “liuzhi,” overseen by the National Supervisory Commission, which was created earlier this year to investigate corruption, according to The Guardian.
Liuzhi — or “retention in custody” — is meant to be an improvement on the system it replaced, “shuanggui,” a disciplinary process that was known to include torture.
During the AP interview, Grace Meng cried as she recounted a dream she had about her husband the previous night.
“I’m sad, I feel hopeless but angry, too, even hate. You can imagine when your children, when your sons ask: ‘Where’s Daddy?’ How can I answer? Who wants their children to grow up they have no daddy?” she said.
