The Murder Case that Brought Down Chinese Communist Party Leader Bo Xilai

Bo Xilai (left), Neil Heywood (center), and Gu Kailai (right), wife of Bo Xilai. (Photo: REUTERS)

Former Chinese political leader Bo Xilai’s wife was charged with the murder of British businessman Neil Heywood.

Gu Kailai is accused of poisoning Heywood in his hotel room last November, and faces a death sentence.

Kailai is due in court this month.

But as The World’s correspondent Mary Kay Magistad tells anchor Aaron Schachter, some aspects of this judicial process may have already been decided for Kailai.

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Aaron Schachter: I’m Aaron Schachter, this is The World. The murder case that lead to the downfall of a former top Chinese leader isn’t over yet. The main suspect is not the disgraced official Bo Xilai, it’s his wife. Gu Kailai is facing the death sentence for the murder of British businessman Neil Heywood, who was a family friend. Officials believe he was poisoned. Gu had business dealings with Heywood, who also allegedly helped her son get into a British private school. The World’s China correspondent, Mary Kay Magistad, says things don’t look good for Gu, who’s being represented by government appointed defense lawyers.

Mary Kay Magistad: In many courts in China defense lawyers aren’t allowed to do a whole lot anyway, and some courts there not even allowed to actually offer a defense, in the sense of saying that the defendant is not guilty. They can just offer mitigating circumstances to explain why the defendant might have done what they did and to ask for a lesser sentence. Basically, in many Chinese courts in most Chinese courts, if someone reaches this point where there’s an indictment against them and where the government itself and the state news organs are saying the evidence is irrefutable, you can bet that the verdict is already known in terms of whether it’s guilty or not guilty, and the only thing that remains to be decided, if it hasn’t already been decided, is what her sentence will be.

Schachter: Well in this particular instance what kind of mitigating circumstances might there be.

Magistad: Well, so this is curious. When the story first broke in April that she was being investigated for the murder of the British businessman Neil Heywood, the story said something about how there had ben nefarious activity around the illegal transfer of money. There was information leaked to western journalists about how Gu had been angry at Neil Heywood because he had asked for a bigger cut of money that she wanted transferred outside of China. Now the state-run media is saying well, what actually happened is that Neil Heywood threatened Gu Kailai’s son and that she was worried, and so she needed to act to protect her son, so she decided to poison him. It’s also been hinted at that Gu Kailai has in the past had some issues with mental stability, which suggests that maybe some sort of temporary insanity or other sort of mitigating defense strategy might be used.

Schachter: Now, regardless of the legal proceedings, this is obviously a highly political case. Gu’s husband, Bo Xilai, served as minister of commerce. He’s been a senior leader in the communist party, and this is the first time a party senior leader or his family is in the hot seat like this. Does it seem that the party has ulterior motives for trying to pin down Bo’s wife?

Magistad: Well, it’s the first time that a senior party leader’s spouse has been accused of murder and where it’s been brought to court. Certainly in the day’s of Mao Zedong party leaders and their families were purged, and prosecuted and persecuted on a regular basis. This by comparison is a somewhat gentler approach, but yes, the party had been getting rather annoyed with Bo Xilai. He had been amassing a lot of personal power. He had been playing the populous leader to the population in Chongqing, where he was the party chief. And I think other party leaders felt a little threatened by his approach. He also was very close to the head of public security, Zhou Yongkang, who’s on the Politburo Standing Committee, that’s the nine most powerful people in China. And I think party leaders looking at Bo being very close to this guy who’s controlling all of this money and all of this potential physical might that could be used to back up someone who maybe wants to move things in a different direction. And they’re like uh, no. Even before the incident allegedly happened there had already been rumblings of you know, we kind of need to keep Bo Xilai in his place.

Schachter: The World’s Mary Kay Magistad in Beijing, thank you so much.

Magistad: Thank you, Aaron.

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