Bo Xilai's wife 'used brutal means' to murder Neil Heywood

“[Gu Kailai] thought that Neil Heywood had threatened her son’s physical saftey and decided to kill him, so she arranged for Zhang Xiaojun to make an appointment and accompany Neil Heywood [from Beijing] to Chongqing,” it claimed.

Prosecutors claimed Mr Heywood was put up in room 1605 of Chongqing’s Nanshan Lijing Holiday Hotel and that on the evening of November 13, 2011 he received a visit from Mrs Gu.

The pair, who are believed to have been long-standing associates, “had alcohol and tea” together, according to prosecutors.

Then, after Heywood was inebriated, Mrs Gu made her move, it was claimed.

“When Heywood was drunk and vomited and wanted to drink water, she then took pre-prepared poison that she had asked Zhang Xiaojun to carry and poured it into Heywood's mouth, killing him,” the court statement said.

Court proceedings were sealed off from the outside world with black-clad security forces blocking off the streets around the courtroom from the early hours of Thursday.

But one student who was among the 140 people present at the trial told the Telegraph Mrs Gu and Mr Zhang appeared “calm” during the hearing despite facing a possible death sentence if convicted.

“Both looked quite calm, peaceful. Both said they accepted the court’s authority,” the student, who did not wish to be named, said.

“There were no tears. It was just about murder, no economic or corruption issues were raised.”

Tang Yigan, the vice president and spokesman for Hefei’s Intermediate People's Courts said the judges would now consider the evidence before issuing a verdict and sentences on an undecided date.

It was not immediately clear if relatives of Mr Heywood had been present at the trial. But the court’s statement claimed that an unnamed representative of the Heywood family had told the court they would “respect the court’s decision”.

Speaking before the trial Steve Tsang, from the University of Nottingham, said the true story about Heywood's murder and Bo Xilai's dramatic fall from grace was never likely to emerge whatever the verdict.

"There is no way we are going to find out what actually happened,"