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/ AFP PHOTO / JUSTIN TALLIS
A far-right extremist was Wednesday found guilty of murdering British MP Jo Cox a week before the European Union referendum, in an attack that sent shockwaves around the country.
The jury at London’s central criminal court convicted Thomas Mair, 53, of shooting and stabbing the mother-of-two as she arrived at a library in Birstall, northern England, to meet her constituents on June 16.
The court earlier heard that Mair shouted “Britain first” as he fired three shots at the lawmaker and stabbed her 15 times.
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Investigators found an extensive collection of books on German military history, the Holocaust and Nazi race theory and a statue of a bust of the eagle of Germany’s Third Reich when they searched Mair’s Birstall home.
Following the verdict, Cox’s husband Brendan called the murder “a political act and an act of terrorism.”
“We have no interest in the perpetrator, we only feel pity for him,” he added. “Jo was interested in everybody, driven not by her ego but her desire to help.”
