BEIJING –The trial of high-flying but divisive Chinese politician Bo Xilai, whose career came unstuck after his wife murdered a foreign businessman, closed Monday after five days of shockingly frank testimony that exposed an elite lifestyle and the troubled family life of a senior member of China's ruling Communist Party.
The court, convened in Jinan in east China, did not set a date for delivering its verdict.
In the final morning of the trial, Bo, 64, retracted an earlier confession, and blamed his police chief's U.S. defection on the chief's attraction to the politician's wife, Gu Kailai.
Wang Lijun, Bo's closest associate and the feared police chief of Chongqing city, where Bo led the Communist Party, "invaded my family, he invaded my basic emotions. This is the real reason he defected," Bo said.
Wang "was secretly in love with Gu Kailai. His emotions were entangled. He couldn't extricate himself," Bo said. Bo told the court he interrupted the pair in close conversation and seized Wang's private letters to Gu.
The pair "were like glue and lacquer," Bo said, invoking a Chinese idiom used to describe lovers.
Bo, famous for cracking down on organized crime, on Monday apologized for not controlling his own family and subordinates.
"I deeply feel I failed to run my household in a proper way, which had a bad influence on the country," Bo said.
Prosecutors had detailed a jet-setting lifestyle and expensive gifts, including a Segway, given to Bo's son, Bo Guagua, 25, a student in the U.S.
Bo dismissed accusations of corruption and a lavish lifestyle, insisting at one point in the trial that he still wore the rough cotton winter underwear that his mother gave him in the 1960s. He said he had no knowledge of how his son paid for his jet-setting lifestyle.
"I'm not an accountant handling flight reimbursements," Bo said.
Bo retracted an earlier confession that he said he gave "because at the time I had hope burning in my heart I could keep my Party membership and retain my political life," he said.
Prosecutors in their final argument said the evidence proves Bo committed bribery, embezzlement and abuse of power. They argued for severe punishment because Bo had refused to admit guilt, according to the official micro-blogged account of proceedings, which may be censored by government authorities.
Authorities here routinely censor the media, block access to many websites, and curtail any group activity they fear may spread unorthodox ideas or threaten "social stability."
Analysts say a guilty verdict remains certain, as the Communist Party that rules China would have not brought Bo before the courts it controls unless the outcome was pre-ordained. Bo, a former Politburo member and son of a revolutionary elder, could face a suspended death sentence, which usually means life imprisonment. The party rarely enforces capital punishment of senior figures.
"Before the trial, I expected a 15 to 20 year sentence, but it's now harder to predict after such an open trial for a case with such a heavy political tone," He Weifang, a legal expert at Peking University, said. "The trial has been controlled but has been quite just in its procedures, which has surprised many."
China's previous leader Hu Jintao removed Bo from power, but current Communist Party boss Xi Jinping is using the trial to demonstrate the government's crackdown on corruption, said Russell Moses, a Chinese politics expert in Beijing.
The trial has focused on the bribes and gifts allegedly received by Bo and his family, but it has deep political implications as well, Moses said. Bo's rise in recent years had threatened to disrupt Xi's 2012 leadership transition, Moses said.
"The trial is very much the capstone to a political take down of an alternative way of conceiving what the Party should do and how it should do it," Moses said. Bo "was a major threat because he had both a style and a political strategy that appealed to a public that was looking for something more than the same old slogans."
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