LONDON // A man obsessed with Nazis and white supremacism was sentenced to life in jail on Wednesday for the murder of British MP Jo Cox in a frenzied street attack that stunned the UK a week before the Brexit referendum.
Thomas Mair, 53, shot Cox three times and repeatedly stabbed the 41-year-old mother of two young children in her northern English electoral district.
During the June 16 attack, he shouted “Britain first” and “Keep Britain independent”, his trial heard. When arrested, he told officers he was a political activist.
Mair, who is slight of build and balding with a grey goatee beard, had refused to enter a plea or speak in his defence at the Old Bailey trial.
He asked to make a statement only after the jury unanimously returned a guilty verdict but judge Alan Wilkie turned down his request.
“You are no patriot,” Mr Wilkie told him. “By your actions you have betrayed the quintessence of our country: its adherence to parliamentary democracy.”
“It is clear ... that your inspiration is not love of country or your fellow citizens, it is an admiration for Nazism and similar anti-democratic white supremacist creeds,” the judge added.
Mair, who was charged under antiterrorism legislation, was also convicted of grievous bodily harm after he stabbed a 77-year-old man who had gone to Cox’s aid during the attack.
“Mair has offered no explanation for his actions but the prosecution was able to demonstrate that, motivated by hate, his premeditated crimes were nothing less than acts of terrorism designed to advance his twisted ideology,” the crown prosecution service said.
Cox, who was an MP for the opposition Labour Party, had only been in parliament for little more than a year when she was killed. She had won the seat in the area where she grew up by a large majority.
Campaigning for the referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union was suspended for several days following Cox’s murder. Immigration had been a key issue of the campaign, which had become increasingly ugly and included bitter personal recriminations.
* Reuters
