Reuters: “China’s Communist Party has banished the country’s brashest and most controversial politician from its top ranks and detained his wife in connection with the murder of a British businessman, the most tumultuous upheaval in the nation’s leadership in decades.
The decision to cast out Bo Xilai from the party’s Central Committee and its Politburo effectively ends the career of the former high-flyer, widely seen as pressing for a top post in China’s next leadership to be decided later this year.
The official Xinhua news agency confirmed a Reuters report several hours earlier on Tuesday that Bo had been suspended from his party posts, and separately reported that his wife, Gu Kailai, was suspected in the murder of Briton Neil Heywood.
“Comrade Bo Xilai is suspected of being involved in serious disciplinary violations,” said Xinhua, citing a decision by the central party leadership to banish Bo from its top ranks.
“Police set up a team to reinvestigate the case of the British national Neil Heywood who was found dead in Chongqing,” the news agency said, referring to the sprawling southwestern municipality where Bo was party chief until he was dismissed in March as a scandal surrounding him unfolded.
It was the most dramatic convulsion in China’s secretive leadership since 1989, when Jiang Zemin was plucked from obscurity to head the Communist Party after the bloody crackdown on democracy protests in Beijing.
Jiang replaced Zhao Ziyang, who was toppled by hardliners for supporting the student movement centered on Tiananmen Square that was crushed by the army with heavy loss of life.
Xinhua said evidence indicated Heywood’s death was a homicide and Gu Kailai and Zhang Xiaojun, an assistant in Bo’s household, were “highly suspected.” It cited a dispute over unspecified “economic interests” between Gu and Heywood that “constantly intensified”.
Gu and Zhang had been “handed over to the judicial authorities”, it said – meaning they have been detained.”
via China ejects Bo from elite ranks, wife suspected of murder | Reuters.
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