Jo Cox stabbing: British police charge suspect Thomas Mair with murder

British police said on Saturday that they had charged a man in the slaying of lawmaker Jo Cox, and said the suspect appeared to have acted alone. West Yorkshire police said on its website that Thomas Mair, 52, had been charged with the murder of the 41-year-old mother of two. [caption id=“attachment_2841634” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  A union flag is left in tribute to Labour Member of Parliament Jo Cox in Birstal. Reuters[/caption] “We have now charged a man with murder, grievous bodily harm, possession of a firearm with intent to commit an indictable offence and possession of an offensive weapon,” West Yorkshire Police Detective Superintendent Nick Wallen said in a statement. Mair was due to appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Saturday, Wallen said. Cox, a supporter of Britain staying in the EU, was shot and stabbed on Thursday by a man who witnesses said shouted “Britain first” in her own electoral district near Leeds in the county of West Yorkshire in northern England. Wallen said Cox “was attacked and sustained serious injuries from both a firearm and a knife and despite assistance from passers-by, the ambulance service and police officers who were quickly on the scene, she sadly died of her injuries.” He said the suspect was quickly apprehended with the help of the public. Eyewitness Hichem Ben Abdallah, 56, told AFP he heard two shots and saw her on the ground. “Her face was full of blood,” said Ben Abdallah, who campaigned alongside the Labour politician before she was elected to parliament for the first time last year. On Thursday, a civil rights group , Southern Poverty Law Centre, said that Mair was a “dedicated supporter” of a US- based neo- Nazi group. A statement on their website said, “According to records obtained by the Southern Poverty Law Centre, Mair was a dedicated supporter of the National Alliance (NA), the once premier neo-Nazi organisation in the United States, for decades.” Speaking to the Daily Telegraph, the suspect’s brother Scott Mair said, “He has a history of mental illness, but he has had help,” . Wallen said police, working with the North East Counter Terrorism Unit, was pursuing inquiries into media reports of “the suspect being linked to right wing extremism” and “the suspect’s link to mental health services.” “Based on information available at this time, this appears to be an isolated, but targeted attack upon Jo - there is also no indication at this stage that anyone else was involved in the attack. However we will be investigating how the suspect came to be in possession of an unlawfully held firearm,” Wallen added. He said, however, that police were working with the Palace of Westminster and the Home Office to review security arrangements for members of parliament. Prime Minister David Cameron and opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn laid bouquets at a massive floral tribute to Cox in Birstall on Friday. “Where we see hatred, where we find division, where we see intolerance, we must drive it out of our politics and out of our public life and out of our communities,” Cameron said. “Today our nation is rightly shocked,” he said. The White House said Obama offered condolences to Cox’s widower and praised her “selfless service”. “President Obama offered 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 statement said. At a vigil in London’s Parliament Square on Friday evening, hundreds of people gathered to lay flowers and pay their respects, holding a minute’s silence. A fund created in Cox’s memory by her friends and family has raised more than £200,000 ($290,000, 250,000 euros) so far for charities close to her heart. The money will support the Royal Voluntary Service which helps combat loneliness in her constituency; the Hope Not Hate anti-extremism group and the White Helmets volunteer search and rescue workers in Syria. Cox is the first female British MP to be murdered. The last British lawmaker killed in office was Ian Gow, who was assassinated by Irish Republican Army paramilitaries in a car bomb attack in 1990. Cox lived with her husband Brendan and their two children, aged three and five, on a houseboat moored on the River Thames in London, close to the city’s iconic Tower Bridge. Mourners laid flowers on the roof of the converted barge along with pictures of the slain MP. With inputs from agencies