Detained Interpol chief Meng Hongwei’s wife says ‘everybody in China is at risk’, as she refuses to meet Beijing officials alone

Grace Meng says Chinese officials told her they had a letter from her husband – but she doesn’t trust them enough to take delivery by herself

Speaking in France, she tearfully told of her anger and ‘even hate’ for officials who detained her husband for corruption, calling it political persecution

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Grace Meng, the wife of the missing Interpol president Meng Hongwei, talks to journalists on October 7 in Lyon during a press conference during which she did not want her face to be shown. Photo: Agence France-Presse

Published: 5:46am, 20 Oct 2018Updated: 8:32pm, 20 Oct 2018

The wife of the former Interpol president who is being detained in China on bribery charges says she has been contacted by Chinese diplomats, who have told her they have a letter from him for her.

Grace Meng said, however, that she would only agree to meet Chinese officials if a lawyer and reporters were present, and that her husband’s case showed “everybody in China is at risk”.

She said Chinese officials haven’t responded since she gave them her conditions to meet.

She said 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 had gone missing while on a trip to China in late September.

In this October 7 file picture, Grace Meng, the wife of detained Interpol President Meng Hongwei, consults her mobile phone in the lobby of a hotel in Lyon, central France, where the police agency is based. Photo: AP

“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.”