The widow of Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo has left China for Germany after eight years in unofficial detention.
Liu Xia, 57, left Beijing early on Tuesday and flew to Berlin.
She had been under effective house arrest in the Chinese capital since her husband won the prize in 2010.
Liu Xiaobo, a university professor turned human rights campaigner, was jailed in 2009 for inciting subversion. He died of liver cancer last year.
Liu Xia, a poet, is said to have suffered from depression after spending years under heavy surveillance.
A Foreign Ministry spokeswoman confirmed her departure – “for medical treatment, in accordance with her own will” – but said it had nothing to do with this week’s visit to Germany by China’s Premier Li Keqiang.
Photos later showed her smiling on arrival in Helsinki en route to the German capital.
