英国每日电讯报：神秘第三方介入海伍德死亡案

英国每日电讯报：神秘第三方介入海伍德死亡案

Mystery third person 'may have been involved in murder of Neil Heywood'

Exclusive: A mysterious 'third individual' may have been involved in the murder of British businessman Neil Heywood, Gu Kailai's defence team claimed during her highly secretive seven-hour trial on Thursday.

By Tom Phillips, Hefei

10:34AM BST 10 Aug 2012

Few specific details have emerged from the trial at which Mrs Gu, the wife of disgraced politician Bo Xilai, was accused of "intentional homicide" alongside Zhang Xiaojun, a family aide.

But the Daily Telegraph now understands that Mrs Gu's legal team claimed that another individual or individuals may have been responsible for the 41-year-old's death, even though Mrs Gu did in fact try to kill Mr Heywood.

According to an official court statement Mrs Gu "used brutal means" to murder Mr Heywood, luring him to a hotel room in the city of Chongqing last year and poisoning him when he was drunk.

The court statement claimed Mrs Gu had decided to kill Heywood after he threatened the "physical safety" of her 24-year-old son, Bo Guagua.

But one person who was in court, and with detailed knowledge of the case, told the Daily Telegraph that while Mrs Gu's defence lawyers had accepted she "attempted" to poison Neil Heywood by spiking his drink, the poison could not have caused his death since a government test found a "non-lethal dose" in a sample of Heywood's blood. ...华岳论坛 - "http://hua-yue.net"

The defence suggested that a "third party or parties", may have subsequently taken Mr Heywood's life after Mrs Gu and her "accomplice" and aide, Zhang Xiaojun had left the hotel where his body was later found by police.

"There was a third party involved," Mrs Gu's defence lawyer, Jiang Min, told the court, according to the witness.

The source said that Mr Jiang had argued that the position of Mr Heywood's body changed between the time Mrs Gu and Mr Zhang supposedly left the hotel and the time police discovered his body.

The source said: "Zhang and Gu said they held Heywood down on a bed with his head lying on a pillow and him facing the ceiling. That is how they left him." But Mrs Gu's lawyer argued that when police arrived and found Mr Heywood's body it was in a different position and the room window was open, suggesting a third individual may have used it to gain entry to the room.

"When police came they found Heywood was lying face down on the bed with his feet hanging off the end. He was turned upside down," the source said the court was told.

"The window was open at a 30 degree angle and there was a footprint near the windowsill and footprints outside on the grass," he added.

Testimony provided to the court by an unnamed witness from Chongqing's Lucky Holiday Hotel alleged that the room had been burgled in May 2011, thus explaining the footprint outside the window, the source said.

But Mr Jiang rejected this argument during Thursday's hearing, the source said.

"Jiang Min said that even if the grass had really been trampled it would have grown back over six months." It was impossible to immediately verify the source's version of events inside Hefei's Courtroom One and calls to Mr Jiang's mobile phone went unanswered on Friday.

One possibility is that Mrs Gu's legal team are hoping to secure her a drastically reduced sentence for "attempted murder" rather than "intentional homicide" which carries a potential death sentence.

Mrs Gu's lawyers did not contest accusations that she had planned Heywood's murder and then procured and administered poison to the Old Harrovian on the night of November 13, 2011. Prosecutors said Mrs Gu had "poured" the poison into Mr Heywood's mouth after the pair had been drinking together and Mr Heywood had become inebriated and vomited.

According to the source, the court was told how Mrs Gu had ordered employees to buy the poison from one or more drug dealers in Chongqing. Mrs Gu supposedly received two doses of the poison, one of which she kept and the other of which she gave to her aide, Zhang Xiaojun, as a "backup".

One alleged drug dealer was subsequently arrested with "40-50" doses of an unidentified substance and is currently in police custody.

But lawyers questioned a drug test reputedly carried out by China's Ministry of Security on a sample of Mr Heywood's blood handed to them by Wang Lijun, the former police chief of Chongqing who triggered the Neil Heywood scandal when he sought refuge in the US consulate in the nearby city of Chongqing in February. Mr Wang reputedly told US diplomats that Mrs Gu had confessed to Mr Heywood's murder. According to a report on Friday in Hong Kong's South China Morning Post, Mr Wang will be tried for an unspecified offence next week in Chengdu.

The courtroom source told the Daily Telegraph that the court was told the Ministry of Security blood test had detected a "non-lethal" dose of cyanide in the sample of Mr Heywood's blood.

A separate source, who was also inside the courtroom during Thursday's trial, confirmed that Mrs Gu's legal team had raised questions about the drug test.

"The defending lawyer said it [the test] was not clear and asked for further investigation and [time] to obtain evidence," the man, who gave his name as Mr Ding, said as he left the courtroom on Thursday.

The revelations about Mrs Gu's trial and the possible involvement of a "third party" came as four senior Chinese police officers went on trial in Hefei for allegedly trying to cover-up the crime.

The officers – named as Guo Weiguo, Li Yang, Wang Pengfei and Wang Zhi – stand accused of "bending the law to show favouritism" by trying to block investigations into Mrs Gu's alleged crime. They are being tried in the same courthouse where Mrs Gu and her assistant Zhang Xiaojun went on trial on Thursday.

Court officials claimed Friday's trial was "open" to the public but foreign journalists and curious locals were again prevented from entering the courthouse by police officers in black uniforms and military boots.