Businessman was lured to hotel and poisoned, trial told

The wife of disgraced Chinese politician Bo Xilai lured a British businessman to a hotel in Chongqing, where she got him drunk and fed him poison, one of China’s highest-profile murder trials in years heard.

The secretive trial of Gu Kailai and a household aide, who are accused of murdering Bo family associate Neil Heywood in the south-western megacity, ended in less than a day at the Intermediate People’s Court in the eastern city of Hefei.

The defendants did not contest the murder charges; a guilty verdict at a later date is all but assured and could carry a death sentence.