“Under questioning”, the ministry said in an emailed statement, Mr Dahlin had made “a full and frank confession”.
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“I welcome the fact that Peter Dahlin can now be reunited with his family in Sweden”.
A Swedish human rights activist has been released and deported from China after he was detained for supporting local Chinese rights lawyers with his organization. He was held for almost two weeks before being allowed to meet with Swedish consular officers.
In his televised confession on January 19, Mr. Dahlin was shown saying that he funded lawyers who committed illegal acts and that he didn’t know whether the content of his human-rights reports was accurate.
Allegations against him centred on support that was offered to Chinese human rights lawyers by Chinese Urgent Action Working Group, an organisation that he founded.
“Western anti-China forces had planted Dahlin and some other people in China to gather negative information for anti-China purposes, such as smear campaigns”, Xinhua, China’s official news agency, said last week. Both were detained earlier this month.
He spent more than 20 days in detention before he was expelled from China this week.
China continued to hold another Swedish citizen, China-born bookseller Gui Minhai, according to the Swedish Embassy.
Dahlin was expelled from China on Monday and had departed for Sweden, Michael Caster, a spokesman for his group, said in a statement, adding that Dahlin’s girlfriend, Pan Jinling, who had been detained around the same time, had also been released.
Mr. Gui, a publisher of salacious and critical books about China’s leadership, disappeared from his home in Thailand in December.
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Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom welcomed his release, but expressed concern about another Swede in Chinese detention.
