CHENGDU, China — A former Chinese police chief helped to cover up the murder of a British businessman by the wife of a senior Communist Party official, but he also secretly collected evidence used to convict her, according to a lawyer for the police chief and an official account released Tuesday at the end of his trial.
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Former police chief, Wang Lijun, in Chengdu's Intermediate People's Court, on Tuesday. Journalists were barred from attending the trial.
During the trial, the former police chief, Wang Lijun, confessed to the most serious charge against him, defection, and did not contest the other three charges — abuse of power, taking bribes and bending the law for personal gain, a court spokesman said. The first two charges were heard in a closed-door session Monday because they involved state secrets, said the spokesman, Yang Yuquan, while the second two were reviewed Tuesday in a so-called public hearing that journalists were barred from attending.
It was unclear when a formal verdict or sentence would be announced. Like the trial of Gu Kailai, the woman convicted last month of the murder of the Briton, Neil Heywood, the opacity of Mr. Wang's trial raised questions about the fairness of China's legal process. Verdicts in Chinese trials are often predetermined, especially when the trial is tied to elite politics.
Mr. Wang helped catalyze the downfall of Ms. Gu's husband, Bo Xilai, and the biggest eruption in Chinese politics in a generation when Mr. Wang fled to the United States Consulate in Chengdu, the capital of the southwestern province of Sichuan, in February and told diplomats there about Mr. Heywood's murder last year. Mr. Wang, 52, had been the flamboyant police chief of the nearby city of Chongqing, which Mr. Bo ruled until his removal as party secretary last April.
Mr. Yang read a statement an hour and a half after the hearing had ended that detailed both Mr. Wang's crimes and mitigating factors cited by both the prosecution and the defense. The mention of those factors indicated that Mr. Wang probably would not be given the death sentence, but perhaps would be given life in prison through a suspended death sentence or treated even more leniently. Wang Yuncai, a defense lawyer for Mr. Wang who is not related to him, said after the trial that "Wang Lijun regrets his crimes."
The defense lawyer added that Mr. Wang had provided "blood samples and other material" to Chinese investigators that helped lead to Ms. Gu's conviction.
"He defected because his life was under threat," she said. She did not mention the Bo family specifically as the source of the threat, and she declined to say whether Mr. Bo's name came up at the trial.
But Mr. Wang told American officials in the consulate that Mr. Bo had punched him in the face during a confrontation in late January. Soon after, Mr. Bo removed Mr. Wang from his police post, and Mr. Wang drove to the consulate in a car quietly arranged by a police ally, Wang Pengfei.
After nearly 36 hours in the consulate, Mr. Wang flew to Beijing with state security officers. The court statement said Mr. Wang then cooperated with investigators — he had "reported on the criminal behavior of others and has contributed greatly to the investigation of those relevant cases."
The statement did not mention specifics, but the cooperation presumably refers to the case of Ms. Gu and possibly of Mr. Bo, who is under investigation by party officials for "serious disciplinary violations," according to the state news media.
With Ms. Gu's trial finished — she was given a suspended death sentence — and Mr. Wang's nearing completion, the one remaining case in the scandal is that of Mr. Bo. No date has been announced for a trial, and some party insiders say Mr. Bo could simply face party disciplinary procedures rather than criminal charges. A once-a- decade handover of power is expected to take place in China this autumn, and party officials will have to decide whether to announce the fate of Mr. Bo before the transition.
By EDWARD WONG 19 Sep, 2012
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Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/19/world/asia/former-police-chief-wang-lijun-in-bo-xilai-scandal-aided-prosecutors.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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