Question: When do murder, love and politics come together? Answer: In the high-powered political trial which has gripped the nation in China.
Source: PM | Duration: 3min 23sec
MARK COLVIN: Stalin's show trials were never like this. Unlike the Soviet accused of the 40s and 50s, who meekly confessed their crimes, China's celebrity accused Bo Xilai is speaking rather freely.
Our correspondent Stephen McDonell joins me on the line now.
An explosive last day in court?
STEPHEN MCDONELL: Quite incredible I have to say. I mean really all they were doing today was going in there and giving their final submissions. And you'd think it would just be a bit of summing up of my argument's this and your argument's that, and then Bo Xilai starts speaking about the police chief that he sacked.
Now he mysteriously found the police chief's shoes at his house, and that this was because of a very special relationship that the police chief was having with Bo Xilai's wife.
MARK COLVIN: This is the police chief whose attempted defection to an American embassy started this whole thing unravelling?
STEPHEN MCDONELL: Exactly, and the police chief who's already in jail for his role in the cover up of the murder that Bo Xilai's wife killed this British businessman.
Now, apparently, he turned up at one stage to Gu Kailai, Bo Xilai's wife, with a love letter. Gave him the love letter and slapped himself on the face eight times to show the depths of his feelings, and Gu Kailai turned to him and said "You're mad." And he said to her, "Oh that's only until I met you."
And then apparently Bo Xilai walked in on the whole thing. And what's more, Bo Xilai is now saying that the reason the police chief tried to get exile from the Americans was because he was worried about the retributions of a jealous husband.
MARK COLVIN: So he's saying he wasn't really defecting, he was just running away. This is like Days of our Lives!
STEPHEN MCDONELL: (Laughing) I know, it's incredible. It started off like John Le Carre and it's ending up like Days of our Lives indeed!
MARK COLVIN: So, now, the other thing, I mean that's all very colourful and interesting. But one thing, one line that really struck me was Bo Xilai saying in court "All the written testimony I signed was made against my will." As I say, in one of the old Soviet show trials, nobody ever said that.
STEPHEN MCDONELL: Yeah, exactly, he's saying my written testimony, it was induced. I mean really he's implying almost torture, that that's how that was extracted from him.
But the thing about this quite sort of colourful story today is that it's also a way of him saying, "I was not involved in this murder, that really it was my wife and her lover." And it is quite plausible then to think that he didn't know about the death of this British businessman, and that when he sacked the police chief, well partly it was just because he was an angry, jealous husband, rather than anything else.
MARK COLVIN: There's a suggestion in a couple of pieces I've read, and we've got to be very brief now, that he's been threatened that if he didn't cooperate worse things would happen to him. What do you think will happen now?
STEPHEN MCDONELL: Well now we've got a week until the final decision is made on any jail time he'll get, or whatever. And I think most people still expect he'll go to jail, it'll be so surprising if he got off. But he has put up a sterling defence though.
MARK COLVIN: Stephen McDonell, thank you very much.
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