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Gu Kailai, the wife of disgraced Chinese politician Bo Xilai, in court during her murder sentencing on August 20, 2012/AFP

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China official who doubted Bo murder case quits: media

Gu Kailai, the wife of disgraced Chinese politician Bo Xilai, in court during her murder sentencing on August 20, 2012/AFP

Gu Kailai, the wife of disgraced Chinese politician Bo Xilai, in court during her murder sentencing on August 20, 2012/AFP

BEIJING August 19-   A Chinese forensic expert who questioned the murder conviction of top politician Bo Xilai’s wife has resigned one of her positions, state media said Monday, just as Bo’s trial date was announced.

Wang Xuemei who openly doubted the ruling Communist authorities’ account of the death of British businessman Neil Heywood stepped down as vice president of the Chinese Forensic Medicine Association, the Global Times said.

The reason for Wang’s timing was unclear. In a video posted online over the weekend she cited her disagreement with a separate, unrelated case for her decision.

The announcement by Wang, who is also a vice director at the public prosecutor’s office, came as state media said that Bo once head of the southwestern megacity of Chongqing and one of the country’s top 25 leaders would face trial for corruption on Thursday.

A guilty verdict is all but certain at the proceedings in the eastern city of Jinan.

The intermediate court there opened an account on China’s Twitter like Sina Weibo service on Sunday announcing the date of the trial.

Posts on the site were being moderated and would be users received a message that: “Comment is posted successfully, but updating the server may be delayed, please wait for 1-2 minutes. Thank you!”

Virtually all of those posts that appeared upheld the official line, such as: “The Communist Party is great” and “Make every effort to fight corruption!”

Bo’s wife Gu Kailai was given a suspended death sentence in August 2012 for fatally poisoning Heywood.

But Wang disputed the Gu verdict, saying that Heywood’s heart would have stopped instantly if he had been poisoned but that Gu’s description of events did not mention this.

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The claim of poisoning lacked scientific evidence, she wrote, suggesting that the businessman might have been suffocated instead.

Wang’s statement on the issue last year soon disappeared online many sensitive items are deleted by official censors although copies were posted on overseas websites.

In her resignation video, Wang focused on the case of a student electrocuted at a Beijing subway station in 2010.

In that case the Chinese Forensic Medicine Association said Ma Yue fell onto the tracks and authorities declared his death an accident. But Wang, holding a photograph of the victim, argued that he must have been electrocuted beforehand.

“I cannot tolerate that the name of Wang Xuemei and an academic organisation that produces such ridiculous and irresponsible conclusions be associated,” she said in a copy of the video posted on YouTube.

The Global Times which did not mention Wang’s views on the Gu case quoted a researcher at the China University of Political Science and Law, Wang Zhenyu, as saying the resignation indicated that “even legal workers are unsatisfied with the current legal system”.

But the paper also cited an unnamed legal medical specialist as saying Wang was “not clear” about the subway case and her judgment was “not solid”.

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