Official site of Tribune News serving Tomball, Magnolia and Waller

HEFEI, China (AP) — The wife of a disgraced Chinese politician received a suspended death sentence Monday for the murder of a British businessman, as authorities move to tidy up a huge political scandal ahead of a once-in-a-decade leadership transition this fall.

Gu Kailai's sentencing clears the way for the ruling Communist Party to deal with her husband, Bo Xilai, who was formerly one of China's most prominent politicians before being stripped of his Politburo post in the scandal. Bo has not been directly implicated in the murder of Neil Heywood, but is accused of unspecified grave violations of party discipline.

"They are eager to close the case and move on," said Dali Yang, director of the University of Chicago Center in Beijing.

Gu's suspended sentence will almost certainly be commuted to life in prison after two years, a relatively lenient punishment resulting from her cooperation with investigators and what the court deemed her mental instability at the time of Heywood's death by cyanide poisoning last November.

Family aide Zhang Xiaojun, accused of abetting the murder, was sentenced to nine years, Hefei Intermediate People's Court official Tang Yigan told reporters.

Bo was not called as a witness in the Gu trial and neither the verdict nor the evidence presented made any mention of him. The charges against Gu and Zhang also scrupulously avoided any mention of corruption or abuse of power, serving to shield the party's image from damage.

Four policemen accused of covering up the crime were given sentences from five to 11 years.

State media say Gu, 53, confessed to intentional homicide at a one-day trial held in this eastern China city on Aug. 9. The media reports — the court has been closed to international media — say she and Heywood had a dispute over money and Heywood allegedly threatened her son. State media said the two feuded after Heywood asked for a multi-million dollar commission on a real estate venture that had gone bad.

Gu was accused of luring the victim to a Chongqing hotel, getting him drunk and then pouring cyanide into his mouth.

Tang said Gu and Zhang told the court they would not appeal.

The ruling against Gu will set expectations for Bo to be dealt with severely, said Cheng Li, an expert in Chinese elite politics at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

"If Bo does not get put through the legal process in the next few months, Gu will be seen as a scapegoat," he said.

State broadcaster CCTV showed Gu dressed in a white blouse and black pants suit briefly addressing the court from inside the dock surrounded by waist-high wooden columns.

"This verdict is just. It shows special respect for the law, reality and life," Gu said in calm, measured phrases.

The sentencing moves China one step closer to resolving its biggest political crisis in two decades that exposed divisions within the leadership and threatened to complicate plans for Vice President Xi Jinping to succeed Hu Jintao as top leader at a party congress expected in October.

Questions remain, however, over how the party intends to deal with Bo, who was dismissed in March as the powerful Communist Party boss of the major city of Chongqing and suspended from the 25-member Politburo.

Bo had at one time been considered a candidate for the all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee at the upcoming 18th Communist Party national congress and it isn't clear whether the party will deal with him internally or put him on trial and risk further harm to its image.

The case has for months engrossed ordinary Chinese, among whom Bo remains broadly popular, especially with the working classes drawn by his populist flair and policies such as building affordable housing and cracking down on property developers and others he labeled gangsters. Many have tended to see his downfall as a politically motivated takedown engineered by his party rivals.

"I think it is just a political struggle, it has nothing to do with us ordinary people. The 18th party congress is coming very soon, so it must have something to do with that. I don't really care about it," said a Beijing investment advisor, who would only give his surname, Zhai, because of the sensitivity of the topic.

Tang said the court considered Gu's testimony against others, her confession and repentance, and her psychological impairment as mitigating factors in sentencing. But he said it rejected claims that Heywood's threats had prompted the crime, saying there was no evidence he intended to make good on them.

During Gu's trail, the court was told she had suffered from chronic insomnia, anxiety and depression and paranoia in the past, and that she had been dependent on medication, but it found that she willfully carried out the murder.

An amendment to China's criminal law in 2011 said that criminals with life sentences who show proper conduct can have their life sentences cut to 25 years. Chinese law also allows for medical parole so Gu could be released after serving even less time.

For their part in the cover-up, former deputy Chongqing police chief Guo Weiguo was sentenced to 11 years, leading officer Li Yang was given 11, and officers Wang Pengfei and Wang Zhi were given five years each.

Former Chongqing police chief Wang Lijun, whose February flight to a U.S. consulate revealed suspicions that Heywood had been murdered, is expected to go on trial soon. Gu allegedly told Wang about her crime, but it isn't known if he'll be charged in relation to the murder.

Security was tight outside the court on Monday, with police officers standing guard around the building and at least a half dozen SWAT police vans parked on each corner.

Gu's arrest and the ouster of her husband sparked the biggest political turbulence in China since the bloody crackdown on the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests in 1989.

Lawyers and political analysts said politics appeared to weigh heavily on the verdict, with the verdict on Gu apparently calibrated to assuage demands for justice without being overly harsh. .

Beijing-based rights lawyer Pu Zhiqiang said the outcome ignored legal strictures that would have required the death penalty, given that Gu had admitted to committing premeditated murder. "Although I welcome this verdict, it doesn't actually stand up from a legal standpoint," Pu said.

Peking University law professor He Weifang said political considerations were clearly behind the relative leniency shown to Gu.

"If the murderer was an ordinary person who killed someone, not to mention killing a foreigner, the criminal would be sentenced to immediate execution," He said.

Follow Gillian Wong on Twitter: http://twitter.com/gillianwong

TOKYO (AP) — When Tokyo's nationalist governor suggested buying uninhabited islands at the center of a long-simmering dispute with China, Beijing immediately denounced him and even Japan's government played down the plan, fearing an international firestorm.

Now activists on both sides have put the islands front-and-center in one of the biggest territorial flare-ups between the two Asian giants in years, a collision of the persistent animosities over Japan's imperialist past and the new fears of China's rising economic and military clout.

An unauthorized landing by Japanese activists on a tiny island in what the Japanese call the Senkaku chain — and the Chinese call the Diaoyu — has sparked an outpouring of anger and anti-Japanese protests across China and fueled calls for aggressive government action that some fear could lead to a dangerous escalation of tensions.

Japanese authorities on Monday questioned the 10 Japanese, including Tokyo city assembly members, who swam ashore on the disputed island the day before. News of the landing prompted thousands of Chinese to hold demonstrations in 10 cities, where protesters sang the Chinese national anthem or carried banners demanding Japan give up the islands.

Some vandals targeted Japanese-brand cars.

"Nationalist activists on both sides are working to exploit this issue for their own ends," said Shinji Kojima, a professor emeritus of Chinese history at Tokyo University. "If both governments aren't careful it could lead to a more serious conflict."

The Japan-China tensions are playing out against a backdrop of heightened concern over China's increasingly assertive stance in territorial disputes across the south and east China seas. In July, Beijing announced that a South China Sea military garrison on a remote island was being proclaimed a city, underlining its claims to own the entire, potentially oil-rich region, which is disputed by many of its Southeast Asian neighbors.

Japan's chief Cabinet spokesman, Osamu Fujimura, called this weekend's island landing "regrettable" because it was done without government approval. He also said it was an internal matter and China has no right to complain.

"These islands are our territory," he said.

The landing was the latest in a series of moves by Chinese and Japanese activists since April, when Tokyo's influential governor, Shintaro Ishihara, announced a plan to use public funds to buy several of the isles from a private Japanese citizen whom Japan says has legal ownership.

Within weeks, Tokyo received more than 1 billion yen ($12 million) in donations for the purchase, which is expected to cost between 2 and 3 billion yen.

Ishihara acknowledged the move was largely intended to put pressure on the national government to play a bigger role in the islands' administration. He is now pushing the envelope even further by seeking permission from the central government to send a team of experts there to study development possibilities and environmental issues.

Fujimura on Monday said Japan is considering the proposal, though sending a government-approved mission would likely infuriate Beijing.

The moves by Ishihara have been repeatedly slammed by the Chinese government and media.

Just days before the Japanese group's landing, five Chinese activists went ashore on the island on Aug. 15 — the anniversary of Japan's World War II surrender. The five and nine others were arrested and quickly deported back to Hong Kong.

The islands, also claimed by Taiwan, are important mainly because of their location, which is near key sea lanes. They are surrounded in the East China Sea by rich fishing grounds and as-yet untapped underwater natural resources.

Japan annexed them in 1895, saying no other nation exercised a formal claim. The islands, lying roughly midway between Okinawa and Taiwan, were administered by the United States after World War II until they were returned to Tokyo in 1972.

The conflicting claims have repeatedly flared up in the past, only to quiet down again. Two years ago, relations between China and Japan were soured by the arrest of the captain of a Chinese fishing ship that collided with a Japanese Coast Guard vessel after refusing to leave the region.

By quickly sending the Chinese activists back to Hong Kong, Japan appeared this time to be trying to tamp down the tensions.

China already is at loggerheads with other Asian nations in island disputes.

The Philippines, which claims South China Sea islands close to its main shores, has described as unacceptable Beijing's move last month to establish its new city on a remote island in the sea some 350 kilometers (220 miles) from China's southernmost province. Vietnam called China's move a violation of international law.

The United States, which maintains a large naval presence in the Pacific, has said maintaining freedom of navigation in the sea is in its national interest, a position that has angered China.

The latest tensions come as China's ruling Communist Party prepares for a major leadership transition and leaders in both China and Japan face strong domestic pressure to make a show of get-tough positions on matters of national territory.

Appealing to anti-Japanese sentiment, which is still strong in the countries that suffered under Japan's pre-1945 imperialism, is also often seen as a good way to elicit nationalist support in China and North and South Korea.

Earlier this month, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak visited a disputed island in the Sea of Japan, called Takeshima in Japanese and Dokdo in Korean, that was widely seen as an attempt to play up such sentiment ahead of elections later this year.

AP reporters Scott McDonald in Beijing, Emily Wang on Ishigaki Island and Malcolm Foster in Tokyo contributed to this story.