HEFEI, China —Gu Kailai, wife of deposed Communist Party official Bo Xilai, did not contest charges that she and a household aide poisoned a British businessman in Chongqing last year after a falling out over a financial dispute, according to lawyers and a court statement issued at the end of a one-day trial here.
According to a person who attended the trial — in a barricaded courtroom that was closed to all but state-controlled news outlets — Gu confessed to the murder at the end of the proceeding.
“I committed a crime that brought negative consequences to the party and the country,” Gu said, according to this spectator.
The completion of the trial is an opportunity for China’s Communist Party leaders to try and close the chapter on one of their most divisive and embarrassing episodes in recent memory.
The next step will be Gu’s sentencing. No date has been set. But evidence presented about Gu’s mental state and about threats that Briton Neil Heywood made against her son could constitute mitigating circumstances that may help Gu avoid the death penalty.
According to one person who was inside the courtroom and has closely followed the case, Gu stood up at the end of the proceedings, thanked the judge for giving her an open trial and asked that Zhang Xiaojun, the household aide, be given a lighter sentence than her. She also thanked the prosecutors and her lawyers, the spectator said.
While a torrential downpour from a typhoon drenched observers outside the courthouse, prosecutors inside described how Zhang accompanied Heywood to a resort hotel in Chongqing last November.
On Nov. 13, prosecutors alleged, Gu and Zhang met Heywood at a Chongqing villa and plied him with tea and alcohol until he became sick, vomited and asked for water. Instead of water, the prosecutor said, Gu poured a pre-made poison down Heywood’s throat.
The court statement said Gu — who according to close family associates has suffered from severe depression in recent years — was not mentally stable at the time and “her self-control was weaker than a normal person’s.”
Defense lawyers also argued that Heywood had threatened Gu’s son, Bo Guagua, and said that Heywood therefore “should bear some responsibility” for his own murder.”
The court statement said Gu was now in “good physical condition and emotionally stable.” Judging by a picture of her published by the Global Times online, the normally slender Gu’s face was puffy, and she appeared to have gained weight.
Lawyers for Zhang reportedly argued that he was only an accessory to the crime, since he carried the poison but did not actually pour it into Heywood’s mouth.
The six-month saga surrounding Bo, who had been a rising star in the Communist Party, and Gu opened a rare window onto the normally secret world of China’s elite politics.
While the lurid allegations of corruption, murder and intrigue involving senior members of the “red aristocracy” did not result in criminal charges against Bo himself, there was speculation across China and around the world about whether he was involved. Bo was stripped of all party and government positions after the murder and his wife’s arrest, with officials citing unspecified “discipline violations” as the reason for his ouster.
Now, with a leadership transition pending this fall, all evidence suggests that party officials want the Bo affair settled, and quickly, so they can repair the damage and move on.
Gu’s conviction had been considered a foregone conclusion in China, where the police, courts and prosecutors operate under the party’s tight control and largely according to script. But the sentence Gu receives will be closely scrutinized for any signal it might send for how the party intends to handle Bo in the future.
Bo, the charismatic son of a Mao-era revolutionary hero, is still believed to command a following in China, particularly among the so-called “new leftists” disenchanted with the country’s growing income disparity and the loss of socialist ideals. Some analysts believe the party’s senior leaders — meeting now for their annual summer retreat at the Beidaihe seaside resort — remain deeply divided over what punishment Bo should face.
Some leaders, they say, want Bo jailed on criminal charges, to preclude any chance of a political comeback by a figure who had become a danger because of his populist appeal. “He may come back to politics,” said Cheng Li, a China scholar with the Brookings Institution in Washington. “It’s in everyone’s interest to punish Bo severely.”
But Bo is said to still have allies who think he should face milder internal party discipline, equivalent to a censure, particularly if there is no evidence that he had a hand in Heywood’s slaying or knew anything about it.
“It’s not just him. He represents a trend of thought in society,” such as favoring a more equitable distribution of wealth, said Bo Zhiyue, a senior researcher with the National University of Singapore who is not related to Bo Xilai. “A lot of senior party members agree with this idea. Bo Xilai still has a lot of political resources, like his personal relationships among the princelings and in the army. .
According to a person who attended the trial — in a barricaded courtroom that was closed to all but state-controlled news outlets — Gu confessed to the murder at the end of the proceeding.
“I committed a crime that brought negative consequences to the party and the country,” Gu said, according to this spectator.
The completion of the trial is an opportunity for China’s Communist Party leaders to try and close the chapter on one of their most divisive and embarrassing episodes in recent memory.
The next step will be Gu’s sentencing. No date has been set. But evidence presented about Gu’s mental state and about threats that Briton Neil Heywood made against her son could constitute mitigating circumstances that may help Gu avoid the death penalty.
According to one person who was inside the courtroom and has closely followed the case, Gu stood up at the end of the proceedings, thanked the judge for giving her an open trial and asked that Zhang Xiaojun, the household aide, be given a lighter sentence than her. She also thanked the prosecutors and her lawyers, the spectator said.
While a torrential downpour from a typhoon drenched observers outside the courthouse, prosecutors inside described how Zhang accompanied Heywood to a resort hotel in Chongqing last November.
On Nov. 13, prosecutors alleged, Gu and Zhang met Heywood at a Chongqing villa and plied him with tea and alcohol until he became sick, vomited and asked for water. Instead of water, the prosecutor said, Gu poured a pre-made poison down Heywood’s throat.
The court statement said Gu — who according to close family associates has suffered from severe depression in recent years — was not mentally stable at the time and “her self-control was weaker than a normal person’s.”
Defense lawyers also argued that Heywood had threatened Gu’s son, Bo Guagua, and said that Heywood therefore “should bear some responsibility” for his own murder.”
The court statement said Gu was now in “good physical condition and emotionally stable.” Judging by a picture of her published by the Global Times online, the normally slender Gu’s face was puffy, and she appeared to have gained weight.
Lawyers for Zhang reportedly argued that he was only an accessory to the crime, since he carried the poison but did not actually pour it into Heywood’s mouth.
The six-month saga surrounding Bo, who had been a rising star in the Communist Party, and Gu opened a rare window onto the normally secret world of China’s elite politics.
While the lurid allegations of corruption, murder and intrigue involving senior members of the “red aristocracy” did not result in criminal charges against Bo himself, there was speculation across China and around the world about whether he was involved. Bo was stripped of all party and government positions after the murder and his wife’s arrest, with officials citing unspecified “discipline violations” as the reason for his ouster.
Now, with a leadership transition pending this fall, all evidence suggests that party officials want the Bo affair settled, and quickly, so they can repair the damage and move on.
Gu’s conviction had been considered a foregone conclusion in China, where the police, courts and prosecutors operate under the party’s tight control and largely according to script. But the sentence Gu receives will be closely scrutinized for any signal it might send for how the party intends to handle Bo in the future.
Bo, the charismatic son of a Mao-era revolutionary hero, is still believed to command a following in China, particularly among the so-called “new leftists” disenchanted with the country’s growing income disparity and the loss of socialist ideals. Some analysts believe the party’s senior leaders — meeting now for their annual summer retreat at the Beidaihe seaside resort — remain deeply divided over what punishment Bo should face.
Some leaders, they say, want Bo jailed on criminal charges, to preclude any chance of a political comeback by a figure who had become a danger because of his populist appeal. “He may come back to politics,” said Cheng Li, a China scholar with the Brookings Institution in Washington. “It’s in everyone’s interest to punish Bo severely.”
But Bo is said to still have allies who think he should face milder internal party discipline, equivalent to a censure, particularly if there is no evidence that he had a hand in Heywood’s slaying or knew anything about it.
“It’s not just him. He represents a trend of thought in society,” such as favoring a more equitable distribution of wealth, said Bo Zhiyue, a senior researcher with the National University of Singapore who is not related to Bo Xilai. “A lot of senior party members agree with this idea. Bo Xilai still has a lot of political resources, like his personal relationships among the princelings and in the army. .