Bookseller Gui Minhai sentenced to 10 years in jail

A statement from the Ningbo court says Gui Minhai decided not to appeal.

Timmy Sung reports

Causeway Bay bookseller Gui Minhai who vanished in 2015 along with four of his colleagues has been sentenced to 10 years in prison on the mainland for "illegally providing intelligence overseas", a court in Ningbo said in a statement on Tuesday.



Ningbo Intermediate People's Court said Gui was charged in January and convicted on February 24. It said Gui had stated that he would not appeal.



The court also said he had applied to have his Chinese citizenship reinstated in 2018, but it was not immediately clear if he had given up his Swedish citizenship.



Gui, who was running a bookstore in Causeway Bay which sold books critical of mainland leaders, first disappeared from a vacation home in Thailand.



Several months later, he appeared on state television confessing to a fatal drink driving accident from more than a decade earlier.



He served two years in prison but three months after his October 2017 release, he was again arrested while on a train to Beijing while travelling with Swedish diplomats.



His supporters and family have claimed his detention is part of a political repression campaign orchestrated by mainland authorities.



Four of Gui's colleagues from the bookstore also disappeared in 2015, only to resurface on the mainland. One of them, Lee Bo, is widely believed to have been kidnapped from Hong Kong and spirited over the border, with the other three snatched while on the mainland.



Three of the men were eventually released, while the fourth, Lam Wing-kee, fled the authorities after being allowed back to Hong Kong to collect more information regarding the alleged case against them. He later moved to Taiwan amid the extradition bill saga, saying he feared the SAR would hand him back to the mainland. (Additional reporting by AFP)