In the latest bizarre twist in the saga of detained Hong Kong bookseller Gui Minhai, Sweden’s ambassador to China has suddenly been recalled after Gui’s daughter shared details of a “very strange” meeting she had in Stockholm that was organized by the diplomat.

A Swedish citizen, Gui Minhai was one of five managers and staff at an HK book store known for publishing material and gossip critical of China’s central government to go missing in late 2015 and early 2016, only to soon turn up in Chinese custody. Gui was formally released in October 2017 but was infamously snatched from a Beijing-bound train by a group of 10 plainclothes officers a few months later, right in front of the eyes of two Swedish diplomats.

For years, Gui’s daughter, Angela Gui, a PhD student at the University of Cambridge, has campaigned for her father’s release. On Wednesday, she posted a blogpost recounting how Ambassador Anna Lindstedt had contacted her about a “new approach” to her dad’s case, inviting her to come to Stockholm to meet with a group of Chinese businessmen.

According to Gui, the meeting took place over the course of two days in the member’s lounge of a hotel. Gui was discouraged from leaving the suite during that time and was subjected to ceaseless flattery by the businessmen, even receiving job and visa offers.

“There was a lot of wine, a lot of people, and a lot of increasingly strange questions,” Gui wrote. “But because Ambassador Lindstedt was present and seemingly supportive of whatever it was that was going on, I kept assuming that this had been initiated by the Swedish foreign ministry.”

Eventually, one of the businessmen, who claimed to have connections with the Chinese Communist Party, got to the point, offering Gui a deal that he said he had negotiated with the Chinese embassy in Sweden: If she would agree to keep quiet about her father’s case, then he would be tried and serve only a few years in jail before being released.

Gui says that Lindstedt was very supportive of the proposal, declaring that if her father was released she would go on Swedish television and “speak of the bright future of Sweden-China relations,” while also warning Gui that China was “adopting a new diplomatic line” which meant that if her activism continued then China might “punish Sweden.”

After making her excuses, Gui left Stockholm. The following week, she called up the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs only to learn that they were completely unaware of this meeting and didn’t even know that Lindstedt was in the country.

On Thursday, the Swedish embassy in Beijing said that Lindstedt had been recalled to Sweden and is under internal investigation. For its part, the Chinese embassy in Sweden has denied having anything to do with the meeting and accused Gui of fabricating their involvement in order to gain publicity.

Meanwhile, Gui concluded her blogpost with this message: “I’m not going to be quiet in exchange for a visa and an arbitrary promise that my father ‘might’ be released. Threats, verbal abuse, bribes, or flattery won’t change that. Thanks for the offer, though.”

This is only one of a number of unusual occurrences involving Gui Minhai’s detention, beginning with the fact that he disappeared from his holiday apartment in Thailand in October 2015, only to reappear in January 2016 on Chinese state television making a tearful “confession” to killing a student while drunk driving in the mainland over a decade ago.

During his taped “confession,” Gui insisted that he wanted to handle his case alone, without the help of Swedish authorities.

“Although I now hold the Swedish citizenship, deep down I still think of myself as a Chinese,” he said. “My roots are in China. I hope the Swedish authorities would respect my personal choices, my rights, and my privacy, and allow myself to deal with my own issues”

After serving two years for a so-called “traffic offense,” Gui was quietly released from Chinese custody, though his daughter said that she had no idea where he was or how to contact him. Eventually, Angela discovered that he was living in an apartment in the city of Ningbo under police surveillance where she was able to communicate with him through Skype.

Then came that incident on a Beijing-bound train. A short while later, Gui gave an extremely surreal joint “interview” to several different Chinese and Hong Kong media outlets in which he accused Swedish diplomats of interrupting his “free and happy” life in Ningbo by convincing him to take a train to Beijing for medical treatment as an excuse to then board a plane and fly out of China to Sweden.

Gui said that the Swedish diplomats had kept him in the dark about what was really going on and accused them of playing him like a “chess piece.”

“My wonderful life has been ruined and I would never trust the Swedish ever again,” Gui said, adding that he is considering giving up his Swedish citizenship and hopes to live in China. He is currently being held for allegedly leaking state secrets.