July 20, 2012,
By JEREMY PAGE
BEIJING—A French architect caught up in the scandal
surrounding Bo Xilai, the former Communist Party official, was taken
into custody in China after returning there from Cambodia to cooperate
with a murder investigation into Mr. Bo's wife, Gu Kailai, Cambodia
Information Minister Khieu Kanharith told The Wall Street Journal.
Patrick Henri Devillers will be held in China for 60 days and then
released if he isn't found to have been involved in any crime, the
minister said.
Another person familiar with the matter said Mr. Devillers hadn't
been officially detained, but was being held under guard by Chinese
authorities after returning to China on Tuesday night following his
release from custody in Cambodia.
France's Foreign Ministry said its embassy in Beijing had asked to
meet with Mr. Devillers as soon as possible, and Chinese authorities had
agreed in principle. China's Foreign Ministry and Public Security
Ministry didn't respond to requests to comment.
Mr. Devillers's situation is a cause for concern for the French
government because China doesn't have an independent judiciary, and the
Gu case is likely to be decided not by the courts, but by the party
leadership that controls them, according to diplomats following the
case.
The Chinese government announced in April that Mr. Bo—once a rising
political star—had been let go from his party posts while Ms. Gu was in
custody as a suspect in a murder investigation in the death of British
business consultant Neil Heywood.
Mr. Devillers hasn't been charged or accused of any wrongdoing. He
had close personal and business ties for several years with Ms. Gu,
after getting to know her and her family in the northeastern city of
Dalian where Mr. Bo was mayor in the 1990s.
Mr. Devillers, who is about 52 and has been living in Cambodia for
several years, was detained by police there on June 13 in response to an
extradition request from China, according to Cambodian officials.
After France urged Cambodia not to act
without a sound legal basis, Cambodian authorities said in late June
they wouldn't extradite the Frenchman, but were continuing to
investigate him.
Cambodian officials said Wednesday that Mr. Devillers had returned
voluntarily to China to act as a "witness" in the investigation into Ms.
Gu's case. Western diplomats at the time said they expected him to be
treated as a free man upon his return.
But Mr. Khieu, the Cambodian information minister, said Thursday:
"China promised to detain him 60 days until September. He will be
allowed to be free if China finds he isn't involved with the cases."
Cambodia's police took the unusual step late Thursday of releasing a
video interview with Mr. Devillers, apparently recorded shortly before
his departure from Cambodia.
"Now I'm leaving for Shanghai this evening, a stop before probably
following on to Beijing to answer...to go and cooperate in the case of
the investigation into Gu Kailai," Mr. Devillers tells an unidentified
interviewer. "I reiterate that I'm leaving freely to this destination."
Mr. Devillers is then filmed going through passport control at Phnom Penh airport's VIP area.
Bernard Valero, a spokesman for the French Foreign Ministry, said
Friday that Mr. Devillers told French officials before leaving Cambodia
that he was traveling voluntarily to China after making a deal with the
Chinese government and would be at the disposal of Chinese judicial
authorities.
"Our embassy in China requested as soon as he left for China to meet
Mr. Devillers as soon as possible. The Chinese authorities have agreed
in principle. We now expect this meeting to take place very soon," Mr.
Valero said. "We have daily contacts with the Chinese authorities both
in Beijing and in Paris."
Mr. Devillers and Mr. Heywood were both part of a small circle of
friends and advisers around Ms. Gu in Dalian in the 1990s, according to
several people who knew them all.
Ms. Gu and Mr. Devillers were both consulting partners for Horas
Consultancy, a company that advised businesses investing in Dalian and
elsewhere in China in the 1990s, according to that firm's publicity
material.
The Frenchman, who was married to a woman from Dalian for several
years, also shared a residential address with Ms. Gu in the southern
British city of Bournemouth from 2000 to 2003, according to British
public records.
Ms. Gu, under the name Horus Kai, which she used in her foreign
business dealings and on a book she wrote, and Mr. Devillers are also
both listed as directors of a company called Adad Ltd. that was set up
in the town of Poole, near Bournemouth, in 2000 and dissolved in 2003,
according to the British public records.
Neither Mr. Bo nor Ms. Gu has been reachable to comment since the government announced they were under investigation.
—Sun Narin in Phnom Penh and Geraldine Amiel in Paris contributed to this article.
Write to Jeremy Page at jeremy.page@wsj.com
No comments:
Post a Comment