The man arrested in Thursday’s fatal attack on British member of Parliament Jo Cox has connections to white supremacist groups in the United States and South Africa, reports say.
Fifty-two-year-old Thomas Mair is believed to have shot and stabbed Cox as she left a meeting with constituents in her district in northern England. Some witnesses say that Mair shouted “Britain First” during the attack; Britain First is the name of a far-right group that opposes U.K. membership in the European Union, which Cox supported. The Southern Poverty Law Center, a U.S. extremism-monitoring nonprofit, says that Mair was also linked to an American neo-Nazi organization. From the Washington Post:
Mair was a longtime supporter of the National Alliance, a once-prominent white supremacist group. In 1999, Mair bought a manual from the organization that included instructions on how to build a pistol, the center said. … In all, Mair sent $620 to the group’s publishing imprint for titles including “Incendiaries,” “Chemistry of Powder and Explosives,” “Improvised Munitions Handbook” and “Ich Kampfe,” published by the World War II-era Nazi party, the law center said.
The U.K. Telegraph, meanwhile, reported that “a decade-old website posting identified Mair as a subscriber to S. A. Patriot, a South African magazine that was published by the pro-apartheid group, the White Rhino Club.”
A nationwide referendum on European Union membership is being held in Britain next Thursday.
