MP’s killer tells court to call him ‘Death to traitors’

THOMAS Mair, the man charged with the murder of British MP Jo Cox, gave his name as “Death to traitors, freedom for Britain” when he appeared in court following an attack that has shocked the UK ahead of this week’s EU membership vote.

Cox, a Labour MP who supported staying in the EU, was shot and stabbed in the street in her constituency in Birstall, northern England, on Thursday.

“My name is Death to traitors, freedom for Britain,” Mair told the clerk at London’s Westminster Magistrate’s Court. When the question was repeated, Mair said the words again, his only comments during the 15-minute hearing yesterday.

Mair, 52, who is from Birstall, a quiet village in the Yorkshire hills, was arrested close to the scene of the attack.

Cox’s murder has sent shock waves through British politics and drawn messages of condolence from around the world. Campaigning ahead of Thursday’s referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU remains suspended as a mark of respect.

British Prime Minister David Cameron and opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn laid bouquets at a massive floral tribute to Cox in Birstall on Friday.

US President Barack Obama called Cox’s widower, Brendan, to offer “his sincere condolences on behalf of the American people to Mr Cox and his two young children, as well as to her friends, colleagues and constituents”, the White House said.

“The president noted that the world is a better place because of her selfless service to others.”

Cox, a former aid worker who was campaigning for Britain to stay in the EU and also spoke out for Syrian refugees, was killed just a few kilometres from where she was born.

A number of UK politicians and European leaders criticised the tone of the referendum campaign, linking its “vitriol” to her murder.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Friday called on both sides of the EU referendum campaign to “set limits” and treat each other with “respect”.

She warned of “exaggerations and radicalisation” in politics.

My name is Death to traitors, freedom for Britain

Yvette Cooper, a former Labour minister, said the “vitriol” in the EU referendum debate could be “very destructive”.

And Christine Lagarde, the president of the International Monetary Fund, which has warned of the economic dangers of Brexit, criticised the debate in the wake of Cox’s murder.

The last British lawmaker killed in office was Ian Gow, who was assassinated by the Irish Republican Army in a car bomb in 1990.

Cox lived with her husband and their two children on a houseboat moored on the River Thames in London. Mourners laid flowers on the roof of the barge along with pictures of the slain MP. — AFP, The Daily Telegraph, London