Bo Xilai: Neil Heywood’s mother ‘horrified’ at murder inquiry

In Jakarta, David Cameron promised to co-operate with the Chinese authorities
in the “disturbing” case in order to get to the bottom of what
happened to Heywood.

“We did ask the Chinese to hold an investigation,” he said. “We
are pleased they are now doing that and I stand ready to co-operate in any
way we can. It is very important we get to the bottom of what has happened
in this very disturbing and tragic case”.

Heywood’s family was initially told by the Chinese authorities that he had
died of a heart attack, and that there would be no autopsy. His body was
swiftly cremated.

The British embassy, meanwhile, was told the businessman had died of “excessive
alcohol consumption”, puzzling friends who remembered him as
abstemious.

Details of Heywood’s death came to light after the Foreign office asked China
to reopen the case. Mrs Gu and her husband have not been seen since
mid-March and are thought to be under house arrest.

Mr Bo has been suspended from his posts inside the Communist party, while his
wife and an “orderly”, Zhang Xiaojun, have been “transferred
to the judicial authorities,” according to a statement on Xinhua, the
official Chinese news agency.

The mouthpiece of the Communist Party – the People’s Daily newspaper – in an
editorial Wednesday said
the investigation into Mr Bo and his wife was the “correct decision”.

While Mr Heywood’s death appears to have been the final nail in the political
careers of Mr Bo and his wife, several sources traced the beginning of the
couple’s downfall to this time last year, when they worked to imprison, and
allegedly torture, a 50-year-old lawyer from Beijing.

Li Zhuang was imprisoned after taking on the defence cases of men rounded up
in Mr Bo’s campaign aimed at cleaning Chongqing of its mafiosi.

Mr Li’s trial and imprisonment demonstrated to China’s top leaders that Mr Bo
was now above the law in Chongqing and had to be removed. “If there was
a turning point for Mr Bo, it was Li Zhuang’s case,” said Tong Zhiwei,
a law professor at East China Politics and Law University, who carried out a
special report into Chongqing last summer.

“Since that case, the illegal practices in Chongqing were suppressed. I
think the central leaders, and the procuratorate, stepped in to stop what
was going on,” he said.

Mr Li said that he was strapped to a “tiger bench” to be
interrogated, a steel seat screwed to the floor with braces to hold
prisoners down and stop them from sleeping. “I sat in one for three
days and three nights,” he said. One of his clients, meanwhile, was
shackled to an iron bar for five days straight, with only his toes touching
a table.

“My case was Waterloo,” said Mr Li. “It destroyed the law
community in Chongqing because everyone was too afraid to defend people in
court. That is why it caught the attention of the top leaders.”

He added: “The most striking thing about the mafia campaign is that the
assets of all the defendants were always confiscated. Some had millions,
others billions. Getting that money was the real aim of the campaign.”

Mr Li’s case is said to have drawn the attention of Hu Jintao, the Chinese
president, and prompted a three-month investigation by Liu Fengyan, the
deputy secretary of the Central Committee for Discipline Inspection.

On the northern outskirts of Beijing yesterday, Heywood’s wife, Wang Lulu, was
at the spacious home in a gated compound she shared with her husband and
their two young children. While the couple’s children are British citizens,
Mrs Wang is a Chinese citizen.

Outside, Mr Heywood’s silver S-series Jaguar sported an oval Union Jack
sticker, and there was a man who appeared to be a plain-clothes policeman.

Mrs Wang declined to comment on the ongoing investigation.

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