VANCOUVER—When Swedish human-rights worker Peter Dahlin got out of bed to answer a knock at the door, 20 Chinese agents burst into his Beijing home, blindfolded him and drove him to a secret prison at “200 kilometres an hour.”

He was held for more than three weeks, separated from his girlfriend who was arrested at the same time in 2016.

Dahlin was held in a padded room, guarded by two men he wasn’t allowed to talk to, and subjected to interrogations and sleep deprivation. The sounds of guards beating other prisoners carried into his cell, and he believes guards wanted to make sure he heard the assaults.

“I was listening to one of my colleagues being beaten repeatedly upstairs,” Dahlin recalled in a phone interview from Madrid, where he works as a director for the human-rights group Safeguard Defenders. “Later on, I learned the reason for it is they wanted him to admit that I was a spy.”

Dahlin fears the same fate has befallen Canadian ex-diplomat Michael Kovrig, who was detained in a move international observers suggest was in retaliation for Canada’s arrest of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou at Vancouver International Airport on Dec. 1.

On Wednesday, Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland said another Canadian in China is now missing after reporting to Global Affairs that they were questioned by Chinese authorities. The Star has confirmed the missing person is a man named Michael Spavor.

After three-and-a-half weeks in Chinese custody, and a taped interview in which he confessed to endangering state security and apologized for hurting the feelings of the Chinese people, Dahlin was deported.

Dahlin has heard from contacts in China that Kovrig was arrested the same way he was: at night, from a residence in Beijing. He believes Kovrig is being used as a “political pawn,” and Canada isn’t the sole target.

“What China is doing right now isn’t so much an attack on Canada as it is an attack on rule of law,” he said. “To some extent this is as much an attack on France or Sweden as it is on Canada.”

Dahlin says Kovrig is probably being held in a Residential Surveillance at a Designated Location (RSDL) facility in China, likely the same one he was held in himself.

“RSDL is a relatively new system,” he explained. “It was the first attempt by China to legalize what classifies as enforced disappearances and has become a favourite tool to attack political targets.”

Detainees can be held for up to six months without any charges or requirement to tell family members where they are, according to Sophie Richardson, the China director for Human Rights Watch.

It’s impossible to know where such facilities are because they are “effectively off the books,” Richardson said.

“They’re in people’s homes, they’re in hotels, they’re in government or party buildings,” she said. “The whole point is they are not in any way official facilities.”

She said there’s no way to know how many people in China may be held in such facilities, adding people can be detained for years.

On Wednesday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau provided no update other than to say Ottawa is talking to Chinese officials about the case.

Kovrig worked for the Canadian embassy from 2014 to 2016 and was a fixer out of the Hong Kong consulate for Trudeau’s 2016 visit. He is currently senior adviser on northeast Asia for the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, a non-governmental organization that promotes ways to prevent and resolve deadly conflict.

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But following his arrest Monday, nine days after Meng was arrested, Chinese media reported Kovrig is being investigated for endangering China’s national security.

Dahlin said his experience was gruelling, his eyes covered by a blindfold whenever he left the holding cell. Minutes seemed like hours as he stared at the padded walls between daily interrogations that sometimes lasted up to six hours. Chinese officials were trying to get the names of more people from him, he said.

His daily meal consisted of “watery noodles” and a “tasteless versions” of breakfast food. Though he was subject to mental torture, Dahlin believes his standing as a human-rights worker and foreigner spared him any physical torture.

“It’s very common to start (with) a few days limiting or completely prohibiting sleep and not feeding,” Dahlin said. “For a foreign victim they can’t be as harsh as they can with Chinese victims, where they will include physical torture.”

At one point, Dahlin was filmed for a video he was told would show senior officials he was co-operating. The questions and answers were provided to him, and he agreed with the hope it would help his case.

“Everything was staged and directed,” he said. The video appeared on Chinese television as a confession.

Shortly after, Dahlin was released. He credits diplomatic and media attention, combined with his ability to disprove the initial accusations of using foreign funding to subvert state power.

Dahlin’s girlfriend, who is Chinese, was also released and now lives with him in Madrid.

Dahlin was handed over to four men “dressed almost like Jet Li.” Blindfolded once again, he was transported to the airport and forced to buy a first-class ticket for his flight out of the country.

“You’re ordering coffee and tea and wine and whisky and you really savour all of it, because you’ve been sitting inside a cell drinking tap water, eating the most watery noodles possible, and all of a sudden you have all of these things on offer,” Dahlin said. “I’m not sure if I’ve ever enjoyed airplane food quite as much as that trip.”

With files from Tonda MacCharles

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