JINAN, China — Ousted Chinese politician Bo Xilai told a court Saturday that he made mistakes that prompted his top aide’s embarrassing U.S. defection bid, but denied criminal responsibility for the incident that triggered the country’s messiest political scandal in decades.
“I made errors and was at fault. It hurt the reputation of the party and the country, and I’m very ashamed,” Bo, in a rare show of contrition, told the Jinan Intermediate People’s Court on the third day of his trial for corruption and abuse of power. “But whether it was a crime or not is a separate question.”
The ruling Communist Party is using the trial to cap a major political scandal unleashed last year when his aide fled to a U.S. consulate bearing revelations that Bo’s wife had killed a British businessman.
Court proceedings Saturday centered on events around the time when Bo’s former top aide, Chongqing police chief Wang Lijun, drove to the U.S. consulate in Chengdu in February 2012, fearing for his safety after he told Bo about the murder.
Bo told the court that he reacted angrily to Wang’s report, slapping the police chief in the face and smashing a cup in fury because he thought Wang was framing his wife for the crime.
