Mother of murdered businessman Neil Heywood pleads with China to order son's killer to pay family up to £5m in compensation
- Businessman, 41, poisoned by wife of top Communist Party figure in 2011
- His mother says widow and young children left without financial provision
- Family seeking compensation from convicted killer Gu Kailai
- Ann Heywood urged Chinese authorities to show 'compassion'
- Said his children, eight and 12, had suffered 'hurt and horror'
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The mother of a British businessman murdered in China has called on the nation to help end his family's 'ongoing nightmare' by ordering his convicted killer to pay them up to £5million in compensation.
Gu Kailai, the wife of former top Communist Party politician Bo Xilai, was jailed for life last year for poisoning Neil Heywood, 41, whose 2011 death sparked one of the biggest political scandals seen in China in decades.
Ann Heywood said her son's two children, now aged eight and 12, were vulnerable not only to the 'hurt and horror of their father's murder', but also to the insecurity of having no financial provision for their future.
'Compassion': The mother of murdered British businessman Neil Heywood, left, has called on China to end his family's nightmare - Gu Kailai, right, was jailed last year for poisoning Mr Heywood
'While struggling to come to terms with my own grief, my overriding concern has been for the security and well-being of Neil's two children,' she told the Wall Street Journal in a statement, adding that her son had been the family's sole breadwinner.
Mrs Heywood broke her silence to urge China to show 'decisiveness and compassion' to 'mitigate the consequences of a terrible crime and to enable my family finally to achieve some kind of closure to our ongoing nightmare'.
She explained that, in the months after Mr Heywood's death, it became clear that he had not died from natural causes but was the victim of murder.
'It also became clear that prominent Chinese officials, including a member of the Communist Party's politburo and a number of senior policemen, were connected with the murder and involved in a systematic coverup,' she said.
After initially refusing to speak to the media to spare Chinese authorities unnecessary embarrassment, their lack of any 'substantive or practical response' had compelled her to break her silence, Mrs Heywood added.
Compensation: Mr Heywood's family is seeking compensation from his convicted killer Gu Kailai, seen with her husband Bo Xilai in 2007
It is customary for a murderer to be ordered to pay court-sanctioned compensation to the victim's family.
A source close to Mr Heywood's Chinese widow, Lulu, said she had been pushing for compensation for herself and their two young children, who are understood to be still living in Beijing.
Li Xiaolin, a lawyer who has represented Gu's family in the past, said Heywood's family was seeking between 30 million and 50 million yuan in compensation.
'The talks started last year, but have not reached any agreement yet that I know of,' Li told Reuters.
'Gu Kailai has no money herself,' he said, adding that talks were 'continuing'.
Bo was sacked as Communist Party chief of the southwestern city of Chongqing last year when his wife was named as an official suspect in the November 2011 murder of Heywood, a long-time friend of the couple who also helped their son, Bo Guagua, settle into study in Britain.
Bo is now awaiting trial on charges of corruption, taking bribes and of bending the law.
The government originally implicated Bo in helping to cover up Heywood's murder, but the legal indictment issued last month made no mention of that and it is unclear if the case will be included in his trial, likely to start this month.
The British Embassy in Beijing said it had passed on the family's concerns about a lack of progress on the compensation request to the Chinese government.
'We've made the Chinese authorities, through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, aware of the family's concerns on several occasions since the trial, most recently twice during July,' said an embassy spokesman, who did not elaborate.
Mrs Heywood said: 'Given the circumstances of Neil's murder, I have been surprised and disappointed that, despite repeated discreet approaches to the Chinese authorities, there has been no substantive or practical response.'
China's Foreign Ministry did not respond to a request for comment.
Chinese law stipulates that victims of crime can seek compensation from those convicted of crimes, but does not lay out monetary benchmarks, which are generally decided by the courts depending on ability to pay and the nature of the crime.
While assets ordered confiscated by courts can be used for compensation, Gu's verdict - as relayed by official state media - made no mention of asset confiscation.
'Compensation should have been decided upon at the time of Gu Kailai's trial, but it appears it was not. This is very strange,' said Pu Zhiqiang, a prominent human rights lawyer.
'The government can compel the sale of assets to pay compensation,"'which for murder cases was generally several hundred thousand yuan, he added.
However, for such a sensitive case as this, the upper echelons of ruling Communist Party would have to sign off on a compensation deal, making any court involvement moot.
'Decisions about this case have to be made single-handedly by the Communist Party's top leaders. It's not for a court or the government to decide,' said He Weifang, a law professor at Peking University who has closely followed Bo's downfall.
Bo, 64, was widely seen as pursuing a powerful spot in the party's top decision-making body before his career unravelled after his former police chief, Wang Lijun, fled to a U.S. consulate for more than 24 hours in February last year and alleged that Bo's wife Gu had killed Heywood.
At her trial in August of last year, Gu admitted to poisoning Heywood, alleging that she had acted after he had threatened her son, Bo Guagua, when a business deal turned sour, according to official accounts published by state media.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2389600/Neil-Heywoods-mother-calls-China-seek-5m-compensation-British-mans-killer-Gu-Kailai.html#ixzz2blrLsXKj
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