BEIJING: Disgraced Chinese politician Bo Xilai will not stand trial until March at the earliest, state media said yesterday, as dozens of journalists descended on a court rumored to be hearing his case this week.
Speculation mounted last Friday that details of the biggest scandal to hit the ruling Communist Party in decades would be heard on Monday at a court in the southwestern city of Guiyang, after a report in a Hong Kong newspaper.
But the state-run Global Times newspaper, citing “a source close to the country’s top judicial body,” said the trial would not take place until after China’s annual legislative meeting in March. “The information in terms of the date and location for the trial will certainly be made public in advance,” the source told the state-run newspaper, adding that the trial “might be very complicated and last up to 10 days.”
The “complexity” meant the trial would not be heard until after the sessions of China’s rubber-stamp parliament, the National People’s Congress, and advisory body, the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, the source added.
The annual meetings are scheduled to take place in early March.
Dozens of journalists from China and abroad gathered around the court yesterday, Hong Kong-based Phoenix TV said, after outlets across the country picked up the newspaper report.
But the Guiyang court held a televised press conference where a spokesman told reporters: “We have not received any news that the Bo Xilai case will be heard in Guiyang.”
Bo, the former party chief of the southwestern metropolis of Chongqing, is likely to face multiple charges including taking bribes and “bending the law” to cover up his wife’s murder of British businessman Neil Heywood.
China’s Bo trial not until March
