LONDON — A white supremacist who shot and stabbed a pro-European U.K. lawmaker while shouting "Britain first" was sentenced to life in prison Wednesday for a crime prosecutors called an act of far-right terrorism.
Jurors at London's Central Criminal Court deliberated for less than two hours before unanimously finding 53-year-old Thomas Mair guilty of murdering Labour Party legislator Jo Cox.
Mair fired three shots at 41-year-old Cox with a sawn-off .22 rifle and stabbed her 15 times with a 7-inch dagger outside a library in the area she represented in northern England on June 16.
The murder, a week before Britain's referendum on European Union membership, shocked the country. Cox was the first British lawmaker killed in office in a quarter of a century.
Mair did not visibly react as he was convicted of murdering Cox and wounding 77-year-old Bernard Kenny, a passer-by who was stabbed as he tried to stop the attack in Birstall, 200 miles north of London.
Judge Alan Wilkie sentenced Mair to life with no chance of parole for the "brutal and ruthless" killing.
The judge said the murder had been carried out to advance a political cause "of violent white supremacism associated with Nazism."
Read Thursday's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for full details.