View Photo Gallery — Bo Xilai and China’s transition of power: The corruption scandal involving a regional boss has preoccupied China in the months before its once-in-a-decade transition of power.
By William Wan, Updated: Wednesday, October 24, 1:57 PM
BEIJING — As the deposed Communist Party leader Bo Xilai sits in prison awaiting criminal charges, friends say his family is struggling against Chinese government obstacles to help him prepare a legal defense.
Bo’s immediate family has been warned not to hire any lawyers, according to two people close to his wife’s family. And two lawyers his mother-in-law has retained on his behalf have been unable to visit the formerly powerful party chief, they said on condition of anonymity for fear of government reprisal.
The new details about Bo’s legal struggles came amid a four-day meeting of the National People’s Congress, which is expected to strip him of his legal immunity, paving the way for criminal charges.
Bo had been one of China’s most prominent politicians and a contender for a seat on the country’s ruling council until his wife and a top lieutenant were charged and convicted this year in the murder of a British businessman.
His spectacular downfall triggered the country’s biggest political scandal in two decades, and lingering questions about Bo’s fate have cast a pall over China’s once-a-decade leadership transition, scheduled for next month.
His whereabouts have been kept secret for months. But a friend of Bo’s wife, Gu Kailai, and a second person associated with her family said Bo is being held at Qincheng, a facility famous for its political prisoners.
The prison is an hour north of Beijing and has housed other purged leaders, as well as protesters from the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown and, most famously, Mao Zedong’s widow.
