Jo Cox report urges UK to help world's troubled regions

Thomas Mair jailed for life of MP Jo Cox

23 November

Thomas Mair has been given a whole-life sentence for the murder of Labour MP Jo Cox, who was shot and stabbed as she walked into a constituency surgery during the EU referendum campaign.

The MP was shot three times in the head and chest with a sawn-off .22 hunting rifle and stabbed 15 times as she got out of her car outside Birstall library, in Leicester, on 16 June. She died in an ambulance after emergency surgery.

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Mair also stabbed 77-year-old retired miner Bernard Carter-Kenny, who intervened to try to save the MP. He was wounded in the stomach and has since suffered anxiety and stress.

Despite refusing to give evidence during the trial or to speak other than to confirm he understood the proceedings, Mair asked permission to address the court following the verdict. This was denied by judge Mr Justice Wilkie.

The judge said Mair killed a woman whose loss would be "unbearable" and who was a "credit to herself, her community, and her country".

He added that the motive was not "love of country or your fellow citizens", but "an admiration of Nazism" and white supremacism, in which "democracy and political persuasion are supplanted by violence".

Wilkie continued: "Our parents' generation made huge sacrifices to defeat those ideas and values in the Second World War. What you did, and your admiration for those views which informed your crime, betrays the sacrifices of that generation.

"You are no patriot. By your actions you have betrayed the quintessence of our country, its adherence to parliamentary democracy."

During the trial, the court heard Mair had a decades-old obsession with Nazism and South African apartheid and had letters published in a US neo-Nazi magazine. However, it was said that he hid these obsessions from his neighbours.

Witnesses said they heard him saying: "This is for Britain", "Keep Britain independent" and "Britain first" as he attacked the MP.

After the verdict, the court was told Mair had committed an act of terrorism in killing Cox but that he had not been tried for this because it was not necessary to establish his motive.

Cox's husband Brendan, with whom she had son Cuillin and daughter Lejla, was in court for the verdict. He took time out during the trial to climb a hill in Scotland, The Guardian says.

The couple had been climbing the country's Munro hills together. Their 100th climb would have been Ben Oss, which the widower scaled in tribute to his wife, taking with him her hat, which he photographed at the top.

Prominent Leave campaigner Nigel Farage caused outrage after the referendum by saying the campaign had been won "without a single bullet being fired", apparently forgetting Cox's death, the Daily Mail reported.

Thomas Muir will not give evidence in Jo Cox trial

22 November

Thomas Mair will not give evidence at his Old Bailey trial for the murder of Labour MP Jo Cox

The jury was told the 53-year-old suspect had declined to appear as a witness, The Guardian reports. His lawyer, Simon Russell Flint, said the defence would offer no other evidence.

"You and you alone have been charged with the responsibility of determining what are the true verdicts in this case," he added.

Jurors had been told to decide "whether Jo Cox's alleged killer is a loner who should return to his 'quiet existence' or forever be remembered as a political assassin", the Daily Mail said.

In his closing speech, prosecutor Richard Whittam QC spoke of the "sheer barbarity" of the MP's death and the "utter cowardice of her murder".

Earlier, the court heard a written statement from Stephen Kinnock, the Labour MP for Aberavon, who described Cox as a "good family friend" and called her "an incredibly well liked and popular person".

Jurors also heard from Detective Sergeant Andrew Cass, the officer with day-to-day responsibility for management of the investigation into Jo Cox's killing, who had been present at Westminster Magistrates when Mair made his first appearance in court.

Cass told the court that when asked to confirm his name, Mair had replied: "Death to traitors. Freedom for Britain."

The officer added: "He was asked again and repeated the same words again."

Mair is accused of killing the mother of two in her Batley and Spen constituency on 16 June, a week before the EU referendum. Not guilty pleas have been entered on his behalf after he declined to submit one during a preliminary hearing last month.

The trial continues.

Jo Cox murderer trial: Alleged killer 'politically motivated'

15 November

The man accused of the "brutal, cowardly" killing of Labour MP Jo Cox was politically motivated, prosecutors said yesterday, and shouted "Britain first" during the attack.

Richard Whittam QC told the Old Bailey that Thomas Mair, 53, stabbed and shot Cox on 16 June, outside her constituency surgery in Birstall, near Leeds, a week before the EU referendum.

The court heard that Cox was shot three times, and stabbed 15 times in a "dynamic, fast-moving and shocking" assault, for "political and/or ideological reasons".

"It was a sustained attack with a firearm being fired and a dagger-like knife used to inflict multiple stab wounds," said Whittam.

Mair was arrested less than a mile from the attack, having fled the scene wearing a cap and a light jacket, and re-emerging without the jacket and wearing a different cap. The BBC reports that he told police officers: "I am a political activist."

"The cap and jacket were later allegedly found in an overgrown garden with gunshot particles consistent with the gun used in the attack and DNA belonging to Jo Cox on them," the Daily Mirror says.

Jurors were told that Mair had strong political interests and had spent time researching a number of far-right topics, as well as the Labour MP, in the days leading up to the attack.

"Mair is alleged to have accessed a string of internet sites about Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan, the Waffen-SS, Israel, matricide and serial killers in the days before Cox was killed," The Guardian reports.

He has been charged with four offences, including the murder of Cox, possession of a firearm with intent to commit an offence, possession of a dagger and grievous bodily harm to a second victim, Bernard Carter Kenny. He declined to enter any pleas, so not guilty pleas to all four charges were entered on his behalf.

The trial continues.