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A policeman outside the Intermediate People’s Court in Hefei, China. (AFP)
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Beijing, Aug. 10: Now that the murder trial of Gu Kailai has ended, far more detailed accounts have emerged from inside the courtroom of the case that prosecutors built against Gu, the wife of one of China’s most ambitious leaders.
The accounts show her plotting with allies, including the local police chief, to protect her son from what she saw as the blackmail demands of the British business associate she is believed to have killed.
Prosecutors presented evidence that the Briton, Neil Heywood, had demanded tens of millions of dollars from Gu’s son, locked him up in a residence in England and sent an email threatening to “destroy” him. In response, Gu sought help from the local police chief, who refused to go along with her plan to get rid of Heywood and later secretly recorded her confession after she poisoned Heywood.
The tale gave a rare glimpse into the darkest corners of a Chinese ruling family. It told of a dramatic struggle between Gu; her Oxford- and Harvard-educated son, Bo Guagua, 24; and Heywood, 41, a longtime friend and business associate whose body was found in November in a hotel in Chongqing, the fog-wreathed western metropolis governed for more than four years by Gu’s husband, Bo Xilai, a Politburo member.
Gu and a family aide, Zhang Xiaojun, stood trial yesterday in Hefei, Anhui Province. No verdict was delivered, but a court official said the defendants did not object to the charges. The details of the court arguments that emerged today were not included in a terse statement issued the previous day by officials.
A detailed account of the trial was posted this morning on renren.com, a social networking website, by Zhao Xiangcha, a university student in Anhui who said he had been inside the courtroom. He said he had written it from memory after the seven-hour trial had adjourned. Most of the account, which was deleted from his renren.com page around noon, was confirmed in telephone interviews with Li Xiaolin, a lawyer for Zhang, and another lawyer inside the courtroom. Zhao wrote in his post that Gu, whose hands shook during the trial, confessed to murdering Heywood.
Many legal experts say the trial was political theatre. Bo Guagua declined to comment for this article. Heywood’s mother said before the trial that the case was rooted in palace intrigue.
Heywood’s wife, who is Chinese, could not be reached for comment. People at the trial said the defence lawyers argued that the poison might not have been enough to kill Heywood, and that he probably died instead from drinking too much alcohol that night. The lawyers also said that Gu suffered from manic depression and mild schizophrenia and was not in full control of her actions.
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