
{VOA NEWS} – Thomas Mair, the man accused of killing British Lawmaker Jo Cox earlier this week, made his first court appearance Saturday morning after being charged with murder and several other crimes.
When asked to state his name as proceedings began at Westminster Magistrates’ Court in London, Mair said, “My name is death to traitors, freedom for Britain,” an apparent allusion to Britain’s upcoming referendum vote on European Union membership. The outburst was his only comment in court Saturday.
Cox had been a supporter of keeping Britain in the EU.
Police investigators in Cox’s county of Yorkshire in northern England are refusing to confirm or deny that the suspected assassin of the spirited 41-year-old lawmaker may have been motivated by far-right nationalist beliefs.
Several eye witnesses to the attack by 52-year-old Mair, a local man, say he shouted “Britain First” as he shot the lawmaker three times, stabbed her and then dragged the bleeding mother-of-two by the hair. READ MORE OF THIS REPORT