China, Neil Heywood | featured news

The murder of the British businessman, Neil Heywood, is still seen as stemming from a financial dispute, but the intelligence links add an enticing subplot to his death.

A former police chief at the center of a major China political scandal admitted attempting to defect to the United States, and did not contest charges of bribery and illegal surveillance at his trial on Tuesday, a court official said.

Gu Kailai, the wife of ousted Communist Party official Bo Xilai, was found guilty and given a suspended death sentence on Monday for the murder of British businessman Neil Heywood, according to the Associated Press.

The one-day murder trial of Gu Kailai, the wife of ousted Chinese politician Bo Xilai, concluded with prosecutors telling the court that she slipped poison into a glass of water to kill British businessman Neil Heywood after he got drunk. Gu killed Heywood, they argued, because he threatened the security of her Harvard University son.

The son of disgraced Chinese politician Bo Xilai says he is confident the "facts will speak for themselves" when his mother stands trial for murder Thursday in the country's most sensational political scandal in decades.

Is it possible for the butler, who hasn't met with his lawyer yet, to get a fair trial in the poisoning of Neil Heywood, associate of political wife Gu Kailai? The lawyer for one of the defendants in China's most sensational murder case is emphatic: The butler did not do it.

Gu Kailai, the wife of the disgraced political leader Bo Xilai, has been indicted for intentional homicide, in a crime that has triggered China’s most serious political crisis in decades. The official Xinhua news agency on Thursday evening published a brief dispatch announcing that Ms. Gu and an aide employed by the family had been formally charged in the poisoning death of the Briton, Neil Heywood, 41, whose body was found last November in a hotel in Chongqing, the sprawling municipality Mr. Bo led until his downfall.

A businessman whose murder sparked political upheaval in China was not a British spy, Foreign Secretary William Hague said on Thursday, trying to quell speculation that has swirled around the man's mysterious death.

UK Foreign Secretary William Hague said Tuesday that news of a Chinese investigation into the death of a British businessman in China followed repeated British requests for an inquiry. Forty-one-year-old Neil Heywood was found dead in a hotel room in Chongqing, China's biggest metropolis, last November. His death was initially attributed to alcohol poisoning but foul play is now suspected.

China has moved quickly to cast the downfall of one of the country's top politicians as a simple case of legal wrongdoing. Bo Xilai has been stripped of his position in the Communist party's politburo because of his connection with the suspected murder of British businessman Neil Heywood.