Chinese woman who killed Briton gets death sentence

The sentence means Gu Kailai is likely to face life in jail for murdering British businessman Neil Heywood last year.

It also opens a new and more politically dangerous act for the ruling Communist Party: how to deal with the ambitious and well-connected provincial leader whose downfall exposed rifts in the party.

“I feel the verdict is just and fully reflects the court’s special respect for the law, its special respect for reality and, in particular, its special respect for life,” Gu said of the sentence in official television footage of the hearing.

Gu, 53, stood expressionless, with her hands folded in front of her, as she spoke.

At her trial on 9 August, Gu admitted poisoning Mr Heywood last November, and alleged that a business dispute between them led him to threaten her son, Bo Guagua, according to official accounts.

A court official, Tang Yigan, said the court had concluded that Mr Heywood used threatening words against Bo Guagua, but had never acted on them. The court found Gu’s actions reflected a “psychological impairment” but did not elaborate.

Gu could still face execution if she commits another offence during the next two years. But such suspended sentences are almost always commuted to long prison terms in China.

The court, in the eastern city of Hefei, also said Zhang Xiaojun, an aide to the Bo family, was sentenced to nine years in jail for acting as an accomplice to the poisoning of Mr Heywood.

“With both of the defendants declining to appeal, this marks the end of things,” Zhang’s lawyer, Li Renting, said.

Four policemen were convicted of trying to protect Gu from investigation, receiving jail terms of between five and 11 years. This could prove damaging for Mr Bo as it establishes that there was an attempted cover-up.

Police sources in Chongqing, the south-western municipality ruled by Mr Bo until he was removed as its party chief in March, have said that he tried to shut down the investigation into his wife after being told she was a suspect earlier this year.

Some Chinese political experts doubt the party will look to prosecute Mr Bo, and note that his name was not cited at the trials of his wife or the policemen. But He Weifang, a law professor at Peking University, said he believed Mr Bo would face a court once the party had decided how to handle him.

Prof He said: “There’s a range of options, such as economic crimes, concealing a crime, or obstructing justice that could be used against him. I don’t think that we can say that Bo Xilai has been cut free from this.”

A source close to Mr Bo’s family said that China’s leadership had yet to make a final decision on how to deal with him, and the lack of any mention of him in the trial left room for negotiation over his fate.

Mr Bo has been accused of unspecified violations of party discipline that possibly include corruption, abuse of power and other misdeeds. These could lead to his expulsion from the party, but criminal charges could see him jailed, making it much less likely that he could ever be politically rehabilitated.

Mr Bo’s downfall has stirred more division than that of any other leader for more than two decades.

To leftist supporters, he was a rallying figure for efforts to reimpose party control over dizzying, unequal market growth. But he made foes among those who saw him as an opportunist who wanted to impose his hardline policies on the country.

His hopes for climbing into China’s next top leadership unravelled after his former police chief, Wang Lijun, fled to a US consulate in early February for about 24 hours and exposed the murder allegations.

Britain’s embassy in China said it welcomed “that the Chinese authorities have investigated the death of Neil Heywood and tried those they identified as responsible”. It said Britain had asked China not to apply the death penalty.