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HEFEI, China - The Chinese woman accused of murdering British businessman Neil Heywood admitted guilt and blamed a mental breakdown for the events that brought her to trial and toppled her once-powerful politician husband, Bo Xilai, state media said on Friday.
The first extended comments on the case from Bo's wife, Gu Kailai, appeared in a Xinhua news agency account which said she and a household aide, Zhang Xiaojun, had "confessed to intentional homicide" in poisoning Heywood in November.
"I will accept and calmly face any sentence and I also expect a fair and just court decision," Gu told her trial on Thursday, according to the Xinhua account, which could not be independently verified.
"This case has been like a huge stone weighing on me for more than half a year. What a nightmare," Gu said.
But the state media account of Gu's testimony also repeated her argument that she turned on Heywood, a long-time family friend who had helped her son Bo Guagua go to school in England, only after she concluded he was a threat to her son.
"During those days last November, I suffered a mental breakdown after learning that my son was in jeopardy," Gu said. "The tragedy which was created by me was not only extended to Neil, but also to several families."
The latest official account from the scandal that has beset China's ruling Communist Party came on the same day that four Chinese policemen admitted to attempting to shield Gu from suspicion of the murder of Heywood, an official said, in another damaging development for the ex-Politburo member.
The official's statement, given after an 11-hour hearing barred to non-official media, formally establishes for the first time that there was an attempted cover-up of the murder of businessman Heywood and comes just a day after Bo's wife, Gu, chose not to contest a charge of poisoning Heywood.
Bo was sacked as Chongqing boss in March and his wife was publicly accused of Heywood's murder in April, when Bo was also dumped from the Politburo and detained on an accusation he had violated party discipline - code for corruption, abuse of power and other misdeeds.
Until then, Heywood's death had been attributed to a possible heart attack brought on by too much alcohol.
Bo's downfall has stirred more public division than that of any other party leader for more than 30 years. To leftist supporters, Bo became a charismatic rallying figure for efforts to reimpose party control over dizzying and unequal market growth.
But he had made some powerful enemies among those who saw him as a dangerous opportunist who yearned to impose his harsh policies on the entire country.
Legal noose tightening
Neither the official account of Gu's closed-door trial, the most politically explosive case in China in three decades, nor that of Friday's proceedings mentioned Bo by name. But the legal noose appears to be tightening around the brash politician who cast himself as a leftist alternative to China's rulers.
Court official, Tang Yigan, told reporters in the eastern city of Hefei that the four - police from Bo's former power base of southwest Chongqing, the vast municipality where Heywood was killed - had found that Gu was a prime suspect.
"By falsifying interview records, concealing evidence and other means, they covered up the fact that she had been at the scene," Tang said, adding that one of the four policemen, Guo Weiguo, was a friend of the Bo family.
"They also agreed on deeming Heywood's death to have been a sudden death caused by drinking and on not establishing a criminal case," he added.
"They also induced Neil Heywood's family to accept the conclusion that it was a sudden death after drinking, and they did not carry out an autopsy and carried out a cremation."
Xinhua confirmed that Heywood's body was found on the same day as Gu's 54th birthday, November 15.
Formal verdicts for Gu and the four policemen - Guo Weiguo, Li Yang, Wang Pengfei and Wang Zhi - are to be handed down at a later date, the court said. Bo's former Chongqing police chief, Wang Lijun, has yet to be indicted, though the South China Morning Post has said Wang's trial could follow next week.
Gu and a family aide are accused of poisoning Heywood at a Chongqing hotel after a business dispute between her and the Briton turned personal. Chongqing police sources told Reuters before her trial that Bo had ordered a cover-up after being told by Wang in January that Gu was the chief suspect.
The murder scandal erupted after Wang dramatically sought temporary refuge in a U.S. consulate in February, just weeks after he was said to have confronted Bo with Gu's involvement.
Bo was sacked as Chongqing boss in March and his wife was publicly accused of Heywood's murder in April, when Bo was also dumped from the Politburo and detained on an accusation he had violated party discipline - code for corruption, abuse of power and other misdeeds.
Until then, Heywood's death had been attributed to a possible heart attack brought on by too much alcohol. (Additional reporting by Chris Buckley and Ben Blanchard in Beijing and Reuters TV in Hefei)
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