July 23, 2012,
The Wall Street Journal
By GERALDINE AMIEL in Paris and JEREMY PAGE in Beijing
A
French architect embroiled in the political scandal surrounding Bo
Xilai, the ousted Communist Party leader, has met French diplomats in
China and is being kept in "good" conditions, according to the French
Foreign Affairs Ministry.
Patrick Henri Devillers was taken into custody after flying to China
last Tuesday to cooperate with an investigation into Mr. Bo's wife, Gu
Kailai, following the Frenchman's release from detention in Cambodia.
"Mr. Devillers met Saturday with representatives of the French
Embassy in Beijing. He's fine and the conditions of his stay, provided
by the Chinese authorities with which he willingly committed to
cooperate, are good," said Bernard Valero, a spokesman for the French
Foreign Affairs Ministry.
The Chongqing Drama
The mysterious death of Neil Heywood in the Chinese city of Chongqing last year is emerging as a key element in the drama surrounding Bo Xilai.
Players in China's Leadership Purge
Read more about key players in the Chongqing drama.
French authorities have made a request to
Chinese officials that Mr. Devillers gets a lawyer, but don't know if he
has one yet, Mr. Valero said. He declined to give further details of
Mr. Devillers's situation.
The architect's situation is troubling for the French government
because China has no independent judiciary and a long track record of
using extrajudicial detention in politically sensitive cases, according
to diplomats following the case.
Cambodia's information minister, Khieu Kanharith, said Friday that
Mr. Devillers would be held in China for 60 days and then released if he
wasn't found to have been involved in any crime. Another person
familiar with the matter said Friday that Mr. Devillers hadn't been
officially detained, but was being held under guard by Chinese
authorities.
China's Foreign Ministry and Public Security Ministry didn't respond to requests for comment.
It wasn't possible to contact Mr. Devillers, but Cambodia's national
police posted a video interview with him on its website last week in
which he said he was returning to China voluntarily to cooperate with
the investigation into Ms. Gu.
Mr. Devillers, who hasn't been accused of any wrongdoing, had close
personal and business ties for several years with Ms. Gu, after getting
to know her in the northeastern city of Dalian where Mr. Bo was mayor in
the 1990s.
The Chinese government announced in April that Mr. Bo had been sacked
from his party posts while Ms. Gu was in custody as a murder suspect in
the death of Neil Heywood, a British business consultant. Neither Mr.
Bo nor Ms. Gu have commented publicly on the allegations.
Ms. Gu and Mr. Devillers were both consulting partners for a company
that advised businesses investing in Dalian and elsewhere in China in
the 1990s, according to that firm's publicity material.
The Frenchman also shared a residential address with Ms. Gu in the
southern British city of Bournemouth between 2000 and 2003, according to
British public records.
Mr. Devillers, who is about 52 years old 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. There has been no public comment on the matter from Beijing.
Cambodian authorities said in late June they wouldn't extradite him,
following expressions of concern from France. They then announced last
week that he had been released without charge—at Beijing's request—and
had flown to China.
Write to Geraldine Amiel at geraldine.amiel@dowjones.com and Jeremy Page at jeremy.page@wsj.com
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