White supremacist guilty of murdering British lawmaker Jo Cox

LONDON — A white supremacist was sentenced to life imprisonment Wednesday after jurors found him guilty of murdering British lawmaker Jo Cox in a brutal street attack in June.

Thomas Mair, 53, was sentenced to life with no chance of parole for the “brutal and ruthless” killing, Judge Alan Wilkie said in the courtroom, according to the Associated Press. The judge said the killing was carried out to advance a political cause “of violent white supremacism associated with Nazism.”

Prosecutors called it an act of terrorism.

Cox, 41, a politician for the opposition Labour Party, was attacked on a  street in the village of Birstall in her constituency in northern England on June 16.

When Mair was charged with her murder later that month, he said his name was “Death to traitors, freedom for Britain.”

The attack happened a week before the referendum that saw Britons vote to leave the European Union. The death of Cox, who backed remaining in the EU, led to a suspension of campaigning ahead of the vote.

The jurors deliberated for less than two hours before finding Mair guilty of using a sawn-off rifle to shoot at Cox three times and stabbing her 15 times.

Mair, wearing a dark suit and blue tie, was also found guilty of possessing a firearm with intent, possessing a dagger and causing grievous bodily harm with intent to Bernard Kenny, 78, who came to Cox's aid, the BBC reported.

Mair did not react when he was convicted.

Cox, a human rights activist who worked as head of global policy for the international aid organization Oxfam, became a member of Parliament in 2015.

The court heard that as she lay wounded in the street, she told members of her staff to “get away, let him hurt me."

Following Mair's sentence, Cox's husband Brendan tweeted: "Jo lit up our lives. And she still does."

"We are not here to plead for retribution. We have no interest in the perpetrator. We feel nothing but pity for him; that his life was so devoid of love that his only way of finding meaning was to attack a defenseless woman who represented the best of our country in an act of supreme cowardice. Cowardice that has continued throughout this trial," Brendan Cox said in statement Wednesday on behalf of the family.

Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn said: "The single biggest tribute we can pay to Jo Cox will be to confront those who wish to promote the hatred and division that led to her murder."