HEFEI, China — The murder trial of Gu Kailai, the wife of the deposed political leader Bo Xilai, began here on Thursday morning and came to an end seven hours later, with officials saying that the defendant and her accomplice had all but confessed to poisoning a British businessman who had threatened the safety of Ms. Gu’s son.
In a statement read to foreign journalists, the deputy director for the Hefei Intermediate People’s Court placed most of the blame on Ms. Gu, saying she gave the Briton, Neil Heywood, a fatal dose of poison as they sat in a hotel room in Chongqing, the metropolis in southwest China that was run by her husband until his downfall last spring. “The criminal facts are clear; the evidence is solid,” the court official, Tang Yigan, said.
A verdict will be announced at a later time.
According to the statement, the poison was prepared by a family employee, Zhang Xiaojun, who had accompanied Mr. Heywood to Chongqing from his home in Beijing. It said the killing took place on the evening of Nov. 13 after Ms. Gu and Mr. Heywood spent time drinking together at a rented villa on the outskirts of the city. After consuming some alcohol, Mr. Heywood began to vomit and asked for a glass of water, which had been spiked with the poison, the court said.
Mr. Tang also said Mr. Heywood deserved some responsibility for the murder because he had threatened the safety of Ms. Gu’s son, Bo Guagua, a recent graduate from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. He did not elaborate on the nature of the threat.
Analysts believe the mitigating circumstances presented by the court — that she feared for the safety of her son — lessened the likelihood that Ms. Gu would face the death penalty.
Mr. Tang, the court official, also portrayed Ms. Gu as emotionally frail.
“Bogu Kailai’s ability to control her mental state was weaker than that of a normal person,” he said, using a name that combines her name with that of her husband. Some analysts have suggested that referring to her by a compound name, following an outdated tradition sometimes used by Chinese outside mainland China, hints that she has or had foreign residency. Party rules prohibit the family of top leaders from obtaining foreign residency.
The court suggested that any penalty would take into account the fact that Ms. Gu was cooperative and “meritorious,” having provided evidence about the crimes of others, although it did not provide further details.
The court’s statement raised a host of questions: it did not explain the “economic interests” that had prompted the dispute between Ms. Gu and Mr. Heywood, 41, an enigmatic figure and longtime friend. It also avoided any mention of her husband, who reportedly knew about his wife’s crime and sought to cover it up.
One Chinese journalist who attended the trial said Mr. Bo’s name came up only once, when it referred to Mr. Zhang as a family employee.
The trial’s brevity suggests that Chinese leaders are eager to close what has become an embarrassing scandal, one that strained Chinese-British relations and complicated an upcoming leadership transition scheduled for the fall.
The British Embassy had no immediate comment on the trial. Two British consular officials were seen entering the courthouse on Thursday morning.
The choice of the venue — in China’s eastern Anhui Province, hundreds of miles from the scene of the crime — highlighted the extent to which Communist Party leaders were seeking to minimize anything unexpected, however unlikely, that might arise during the painstakingly orchestrated trial. Legal analysts say distance was not the only factor in choosing the provincial capital of Anhui: the president of the Supreme People’s Court, Wang Shenjun, has deep ties to the province, all but guaranteeing a compliant court.
“This trial is just for show,” said Teng Biao, a prominent defense lawyer. “You can be sure there would be no surprises.”
Coverage of the scandal, the most sensational in recent memory, has received little coverage in the Chinese media. Domestic news outlets have been ordered to use dispatches from Xinhua, the state news agency, and public discussion on the Internet has been blocked. On Thursday, a newspaper in Shenzhen splashed a photograph of Mr. Heywood on its front page, in what appeared to be a sly attempt to circumvent the restrictions. Inside, the paper ran the spare Xinhua announcement.
On Thursday evening, the state broadcaster reported on the trial with footage from inside the courtroom. The clip showed Ms. Gu, smiling and wearing a black sport jacket over a white dress shirt, as she was led into the chambers. Mr. Zhang was dressed in a white golf shirt. Neither was in handcuffs. The camera lingered on two non-Chinese men, presumably the British officials. The announcer read the same statement that had been given to foreign journalists earlier, although it did add one significant new detail: that four police officials in Chongqing would be tried for harboring Mr. Gu. The officers, who will be tried on Friday in the same court, have been charged with “bending the law to serve personal favoritism,” according to the broadcast.
The trial comes at a sensitive time for the Communist Party, which is going through the final steps of a once-in-a-decade waltz that will elevate a new raft of leaders. Although the killing of a foreign national, allegedly by the wife of a high-profile politician, has proved embarrassing to Beijing, Chinese leaders have been more challenged by the events that unfolded in the months that followed the death.
In February, a trusted ally of Mr. Bo’s who was reportedly fearing for his life sought refuge in the U.S. Consulate in Chengdu, where he revealed details of the killing — and perhaps other information that the party would rather not share with the Americans.
Senior leaders moved relatively quickly, ousting Mr. Bo from his posts in April, and shortly afterward, Xinhua announced the arrest of Ms. Gu and Mr. Zhang, the family employee. The evidence, Xinhua said last month, was “irrefutable and substantial.”
Although Xinhua has broadly described the crime as born from “a conflict of economic interests,” most analysts predicted that the details of those interests would not be discussed during the trial, given their potential to complicate the case against Mr. Bo, who is still awaiting his fate.
Cheng Li, an expert on Chinese politics at the Brookings Institution, said party leaders might also be leery of publicly airing details about financial dealings that could involve tens of millions of dollars, according to those with knowledge of the investigation. Although few Chinese have illusions about the probity of their leaders, party officials do not necessarily want such dirty laundry to be aired so prominently, especially about Mr. Bo, who still enjoys strong support among certain factions of the leadership and among ordinary Chinese.
“They are eager to keep the focus on murder, which is so much easier to deal with than corruption,” Mr. Li said.
It is not clear whether any family members attended the trial on Thursday. Bo Guagua, the couple’s only child, who recently graduated from the Kennedy School at Harvard, remained in the United States. Mr. Bo declined to discuss the case, but in a statement on Wednesday he confirmed that he had submitted witness testimony on behalf of his mother.
“As I was cited as a motivating factor for the crimes accused of my mother, I have already submitted my witness statement,” he said. “I hope that my mother will have the opportunity to review them.”
It is likely that neither his mother nor her lawyers had a chance to review such documents in advance. According to one person close to the family, as of Wednesday afternoon Ms. Gu had not seen the prosecution’s case file.
Still, in the scheme of things, such judicial niceties were likely irrelevant. The defense lawyers initially chosen by the family were barred from seeing Ms. Gu; a few weeks ago, a pair of government-appointed lawyers from Anhui were chosen instead.
“Forcing court-appointed lawyers on a defendant is illegal but it’s an old trick,” said Mr. Teng, the defense lawyer. “Court-appointed lawyers are more interested in helping the prosecutors move the trial along than with protecting a defendant’s rights.”
In a statement read to foreign journalists, the deputy director for the Hefei Intermediate People’s Court placed most of the blame on Ms. Gu, saying she gave the Briton, Neil Heywood, a fatal dose of poison as they sat in a hotel room in Chongqing, the metropolis in southwest China that was run by her husband until his downfall last spring. “The criminal facts are clear; the evidence is solid,” the court official, Tang Yigan, said.
A verdict will be announced at a later time.
According to the statement, the poison was prepared by a family employee, Zhang Xiaojun, who had accompanied Mr. Heywood to Chongqing from his home in Beijing. It said the killing took place on the evening of Nov. 13 after Ms. Gu and Mr. Heywood spent time drinking together at a rented villa on the outskirts of the city. After consuming some alcohol, Mr. Heywood began to vomit and asked for a glass of water, which had been spiked with the poison, the court said.
Mr. Tang also said Mr. Heywood deserved some responsibility for the murder because he had threatened the safety of Ms. Gu’s son, Bo Guagua, a recent graduate from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. He did not elaborate on the nature of the threat.
Analysts believe the mitigating circumstances presented by the court — that she feared for the safety of her son — lessened the likelihood that Ms. Gu would face the death penalty.
Mr. Tang, the court official, also portrayed Ms. Gu as emotionally frail.
“Bogu Kailai’s ability to control her mental state was weaker than that of a normal person,” he said, using a name that combines her name with that of her husband. Some analysts have suggested that referring to her by a compound name, following an outdated tradition sometimes used by Chinese outside mainland China, hints that she has or had foreign residency. Party rules prohibit the family of top leaders from obtaining foreign residency.
The court suggested that any penalty would take into account the fact that Ms. Gu was cooperative and “meritorious,” having provided evidence about the crimes of others, although it did not provide further details.
The court’s statement raised a host of questions: it did not explain the “economic interests” that had prompted the dispute between Ms. Gu and Mr. Heywood, 41, an enigmatic figure and longtime friend. It also avoided any mention of her husband, who reportedly knew about his wife’s crime and sought to cover it up.
One Chinese journalist who attended the trial said Mr. Bo’s name came up only once, when it referred to Mr. Zhang as a family employee.
The trial’s brevity suggests that Chinese leaders are eager to close what has become an embarrassing scandal, one that strained Chinese-British relations and complicated an upcoming leadership transition scheduled for the fall.
The British Embassy had no immediate comment on the trial. Two British consular officials were seen entering the courthouse on Thursday morning.
The choice of the venue — in China’s eastern Anhui Province, hundreds of miles from the scene of the crime — highlighted the extent to which Communist Party leaders were seeking to minimize anything unexpected, however unlikely, that might arise during the painstakingly orchestrated trial. Legal analysts say distance was not the only factor in choosing the provincial capital of Anhui: the president of the Supreme People’s Court, Wang Shenjun, has deep ties to the province, all but guaranteeing a compliant court.
“This trial is just for show,” said Teng Biao, a prominent defense lawyer. “You can be sure there would be no surprises.”
Coverage of the scandal, the most sensational in recent memory, has received little coverage in the Chinese media. Domestic news outlets have been ordered to use dispatches from Xinhua, the state news agency, and public discussion on the Internet has been blocked. On Thursday, a newspaper in Shenzhen splashed a photograph of Mr. Heywood on its front page, in what appeared to be a sly attempt to circumvent the restrictions. Inside, the paper ran the spare Xinhua announcement.
On Thursday evening, the state broadcaster reported on the trial with footage from inside the courtroom. The clip showed Ms. Gu, smiling and wearing a black sport jacket over a white dress shirt, as she was led into the chambers. Mr. Zhang was dressed in a white golf shirt. Neither was in handcuffs. The camera lingered on two non-Chinese men, presumably the British officials. The announcer read the same statement that had been given to foreign journalists earlier, although it did add one significant new detail: that four police officials in Chongqing would be tried for harboring Mr. Gu. The officers, who will be tried on Friday in the same court, have been charged with “bending the law to serve personal favoritism,” according to the broadcast.
The trial comes at a sensitive time for the Communist Party, which is going through the final steps of a once-in-a-decade waltz that will elevate a new raft of leaders. Although the killing of a foreign national, allegedly by the wife of a high-profile politician, has proved embarrassing to Beijing, Chinese leaders have been more challenged by the events that unfolded in the months that followed the death.
In February, a trusted ally of Mr. Bo’s who was reportedly fearing for his life sought refuge in the U.S. Consulate in Chengdu, where he revealed details of the killing — and perhaps other information that the party would rather not share with the Americans.
Senior leaders moved relatively quickly, ousting Mr. Bo from his posts in April, and shortly afterward, Xinhua announced the arrest of Ms. Gu and Mr. Zhang, the family employee. The evidence, Xinhua said last month, was “irrefutable and substantial.”
Although Xinhua has broadly described the crime as born from “a conflict of economic interests,” most analysts predicted that the details of those interests would not be discussed during the trial, given their potential to complicate the case against Mr. Bo, who is still awaiting his fate.
Cheng Li, an expert on Chinese politics at the Brookings Institution, said party leaders might also be leery of publicly airing details about financial dealings that could involve tens of millions of dollars, according to those with knowledge of the investigation. Although few Chinese have illusions about the probity of their leaders, party officials do not necessarily want such dirty laundry to be aired so prominently, especially about Mr. Bo, who still enjoys strong support among certain factions of the leadership and among ordinary Chinese.
“They are eager to keep the focus on murder, which is so much easier to deal with than corruption,” Mr. Li said.
It is not clear whether any family members attended the trial on Thursday. Bo Guagua, the couple’s only child, who recently graduated from the Kennedy School at Harvard, remained in the United States. Mr. Bo declined to discuss the case, but in a statement on Wednesday he confirmed that he had submitted witness testimony on behalf of his mother.
“As I was cited as a motivating factor for the crimes accused of my mother, I have already submitted my witness statement,” he said. “I hope that my mother will have the opportunity to review them.”
It is likely that neither his mother nor her lawyers had a chance to review such documents in advance. According to one person close to the family, as of Wednesday afternoon Ms. Gu had not seen the prosecution’s case file.
Still, in the scheme of things, such judicial niceties were likely irrelevant. The defense lawyers initially chosen by the family were barred from seeing Ms. Gu; a few weeks ago, a pair of government-appointed lawyers from Anhui were chosen instead.
“Forcing court-appointed lawyers on a defendant is illegal but it’s an old trick,” said Mr. Teng, the defense lawyer. “Court-appointed lawyers are more interested in helping the prosecutors move the trial along than with protecting a defendant’s rights.”