Court investigation on Bo's case completed, trial to continue on Monday

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Court investigation on Bo's case completed, trial to continue on Monday

(Xinhua) 14:05, August 25, 2013

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JINAN, Aug. 25 (Xinhua) -- The Jinan Intermediate People's Court announced that the trial of bribery, embezzlement and abuse of power involving Bo Xilai adjourned on Sunday morning and will resume on Monday.

The whole court investigation phase of this case was completed, the court said.

Bo, 64, is former secretary of the Chongqing Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and a former member of the CPC Central Committee Political Bureau.

At Sunday morning's hearing that ended at around 10:55 a.m., the prosecution and defense cross-examined the testimony that Wang Lijun, former vice mayor and police chief of Chongqing Municipality, gave at the court on Saturday afternoon on the charge of power abuse against Bo.

One of the charges against Bo is abusing his power when it was reported that his wife Bogu Kailai was suspected of intentional homicide, and when his subordinate Wang Lijun defected.

The defendant and his lawyers held that there were doubts about the objectivity and authenticity of Wang's testimony at the court.

The prosecutors held that the testimony given by Wang at the court was consistent with the testimony he gave prior to the trial and could be verified by testimonies of other witnesses and documentation evidence.

Wang's testimony at the court was real and reliable, the prosecutors said.

The presiding judge required the court clerks to accurately record the opinions of the two sides.

At Sunday's trial, prosecutors presented more evidence on the charge of power abuse against Bo, which showed that Bo ordered the investigation on officials in charge of handling Bogu's intentional homicide case and violated organizational procedures to remove Wang from his post as head of the Chongqing municipal police.

The evidence also showed that Bo allowed his wife, who was not a civil servant, to take part in discussions about how to handle Wang's defection, and sanctioned her suggestion to ask a hospital to fake a diagnosis that Wang had mental illness as well as the release of such false information to the public.

The prosecution and defense cross-examined these evidence.

Bo admitted that he made mistakes in handling these incidents but insisted that he was not involved in any conducts of power abuse and the responsibilities were all on his wife and a third participant surnamed Wu.

The prosecutors also presented evidence on how Bo's case was exposed and investigated and that he did not turn himself in, confess his crimes or inform against others.

In the four days of trial, prosecutors also accused Bo of accepting bribes from businessmen Tang Xiaolin, general manager of Dalian International Development Co. Ltd, and Xu Ming, chairman of Dalian Shide Group Co. Ltd. and embezzling 5 million yuan from a government project.