Neo-Nazi killer jailed for life for slaying lawmaker Jo Cox
LONDON — A white supremacist who shot and stabbed a pro-European U.K. lawmaker while shouting “Britain first” was sentenced to life in prison Wednesday for a crime prosecutors called an act of far-right terrorism.
Jurors at London’s Central Criminal Court deliberated for less than two hours before unanimously finding 53-year-old Thomas Mair guilty of murdering Labour Party legislator Jo Cox.
Mair fired three shots at 41-year-old Cox with a sawn-off .22 rifle and stabbed her 15 times with a 7-inch (17-cm) dagger outside a library in the area she represented in northern England on June 16.
The murder, a week before Britain’s referendum on European Union membership, shocked the country. Cox was the first British lawmaker killed in office in a quarter of a century.