Campaigning in Britain’s EU membership referendum remained suspended yesterday as the country absorbed the daylight slaying of lawmaker Jo Cox with shock and worry that the political fury unleashed by the EU campaign was somehow connected to the killing.
A US civil rights group said the man suspected of the gun and knife attack had links to a US white supremacist organization.
The Southern Poverty Law Center said it has records showing Thomas Mair was a supporter of the National Alliance.
The center said Mair purchased a manual from the group in 1999 that included instructions on how to build a pistol.
On its Web site, the center published copies of receipts showing that a Thomas Mair of West Yorkshire — the county where Cox and her suspected killer both lived — bought publications including Chemistry of Powder and Explosives and Improvised Munitions Handbook.
The National Alliance was founded by William Pierce, whose book The Turner Diaries has been called a grisly blueprint for a bloody race war.
A Thomas Mair of Batley — the town where the suspect lives — was also named as a former subscriber to pro-apartheid publication SA Patriot.
In 2006, the online newsletter of far-right group the Springbok Club said Mair was “one of the earliest subscribers and supporters of SA Patriot.”
Mair, 52, was arrested on Thursday on suspicion of killing Cox, who was shot and stabbed outside a library in her northern England constituency.
The suspect’s brother, Scott Mair, told reporters his brother had a history of mental illness, but was not violent.
Witnesses said Cox, a 41-year-old Labour Party legislator, was attacked by a man with a homemade or antique-looking gun.
Clarke Rothwell, who runs a cafe near the scene of the slaying, said the assailant shouted “Britain first” or “put Britain first” several times.
Britain First is the name of a far-right group, which said it had no connection to the killing.
Cox was a former aid worker who had championed the cause of Syrian refugees and campaigned for Britain to stay in the EU when it votes in a referendum on Thursday next week.
The referendum has sparked an intense debate about immigration and Britain’s place in the world. “Leave” campaigners have said voters should quit the EU to take their country back from bureaucrats in Brussels and curb large-scale immigration from other EU nations.
Both sides in the referendum have halted campaigning in the wake of Cox’s death. It was not clear when the campaigns would resume.
Politicians from all parties have paid tribute to Cox and Buckingham Palace said Queen Elizabeth II had written to her husband, Brendan Cox. The couple had two young children.
Rows of police combed the pavement around the site of the attack outside the library in the small town of Birstall, part of Batley, 320km north of London.
Scores of residents left flowers at a memorial at the foot of a nearby statue. Mothers walked their children to the town’s primary school past the spot, some wiping away tears.
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