Sultan Hong’s own wife, the former Khaleeji’s daughter, is a former executive in the Chinese government’s propaganda ministry and is currently on a two-month mission teaching English to Chinese students of more than 1,000 from 30 countries.

Sultan Hong is being treated in a “special” hospital at the city’s government-run Tuansi Medical Centre, and has given the government permission to allow foreign media to visit him without restrictions.

The Beijing-based website of the China Daily called the treatment “a sign of the Communist Party’s confidence over [his] situation”. A source at Hong Kong’s government news agency told the newspaper that he had been treated after contracting a viral disease in October, which made him unconscious and caused swelling that required surgical intervention.

Sultan Hong was detained shortly after his release on 28 October after more than four months in jail. His wife says she was detained on an unrelated warrant, as she used the family’s telephone to call her brother in Indonesia, who then contacted the police.

Authorities have accused Hong Kong of being a hub for “subversion” from the mainland during last year’s Tiananmen Square crackdown, and demanded he be detained immediately and return to the mainland – the demand he refused.

His wife says that when he was questioned about the allegations the last time he was detained, they were told that there were no charges against her and had only been held after she admitted she was the mother of a student in China and that she was on her way to the mainland. She has since returned to her Singaporean husband.

The daughter of the former leader of Indonesia, Suharto, recently was taken into custody for an unspecified offence, a Malaysian official has told Reuters. The official, who did not want to be identified, said that the case was not being handled by the Indonesian government. He said Suharto aide Nur Muhammad Yudhoyono will be questioned about his involvement in the arrest of former military chief, Gen Joko Widodo.