BRITAIN: Life Sentence For White Supremacist Who Murdered MP Jo Cox While Shouting Pro-Brexit Slogan

The BBC reports:

Thomas Mair has been jailed for life after being found guilty of the murder of Labour MP Jo Cox. The 53-year-old shot and stabbed to death the mother-of-two in Birstall, West Yorkshire, on 16 June, a week before the EU referendum vote. Mair shouted “Britain First” in the attack, but the judge said the true “patriot” was Mrs Cox, not Mair.

Prosecutors said Mair was motivated by hate and his crimes were “nothing less than acts of terrorism”. Mair was also found guilty of having a firearm with intent, causing grievous bodily harm with intent to 78-year-old Bernard Kenny, who tried to help the MP, and having an offensive weapon, namely a dagger.

Mair, dressed in a dark suit and blue tie, remained impassive as the verdicts were read out, after one hour of deliberations. Mair’s inspiration was not love of country but admiration for Nazism, the judge said, which was a betrayal of our parents’ generation’s huge sacrifices during World War II. He said Mair had not the courage to acknowledge what he did and forced Mrs Cox’s family to relive the events. Judge Mr Justice Wilkie said the murder was carried out to advance a political cause of violent white supremacism, associated with Nazism.