The Swedish government has charged Babur Mehsut, an ethnic Uigher born in China who was naturalized as a Swedish citizen, with spying for the Chinese government:
Born in the northwestern Chinese city of Lanzhou to a Uyghur father and an ethnic minority Hui Muslim mother, Babur later moved to Hotan in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), now China’s northwesternmost province.
He entered Sweden as a political refugee in the late 1990s and became a Swedish citizen in 2002.
The chief prosecutor in the case, Tomas Lindstrand, told local media Babur was suspected on reasonable grounds of unlawful espionage from January 2008-June 2009, with activities both in Sweden and overseas.
Swedish authorities allege that Mehsut was spying on the Uigher community in Sweden, and the Swedish government has expelled a Chinese diplomat in Sweden. China has responded by expelling a Swedish diplomat from China.
See also past CDT posts on the Uighers.
