This video image taken from CCTV shows Gu Kailai, center, the wife of disgraced politician Bo Xilai, standing trial in the Intermediate People’s Court in the eastern Chinese city of Hefei Thursday Aug. 9, 2012. According to testimony Thursday in one of China’s highest-profile murder trials in years, Gu lured British businessman Neil Heywood to a hotel in the southwestern mega-city of Chongqing, where she got him drunk and fed him poison. The secretive trial of Gu and a household aide, who are accused of murdering Bo family associate Heywood, ended in less than a day at the court.BEIJING – The wife of the disgraced former Communist Party boss of Chongqing confessed to murdering a British businessman, apologized for the “tragedy” she caused and was ready to accept her punishment, state media reported Friday. The most detailed accounting of the scandal that has shaken the country’s leadership describes Gu Kailai as depressed and fearful that Neil Heywood would harm her family – factors that may bring leniency when she is convicted and sentenced.
The official Xinhua News Agency in an extensive report on the case said Gu and her co-defendant “confessed to intentional murder” at their seven-hour trial the previous day. They were accused of poisoning her business associate Neil Heywood with cyanide last November after having a dispute over economic interests.
Gu’s arrest and the ouster of her husband Bo Xilai as Chongqing party chief in March sparked the biggest political turbulence in China since the putdown of the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989. Her tightly orchestrated trial was a step toward resolving the scandal before the party’s once-a-decade leadership transition this fall.
The court in Hefei in eastern China’s Anhui province said a verdict against Gu and the family aide accused as an accomplice would be delivered later. Their trial was followed Friday by the trial of four senior Chinese police officers accused of helping Gu cover up the crime.
Xinhua said Gu accepted all the facts in the indictment, saying: “The tragedy which was created by me was not only extended to Neil, but also to several families.”