LONDON (AA) - The trial into the murder of a U.K. lawmaker who was killed in the street a week before the Brexit referendum began on Monday.
Labour Party lawmaker Jo Cox, a mother of two young children, was shot three times and repeatedly stabbed as she arrived for a meeting with constituents in her Batley and Spen electoral district in the north of England on June 16.
Thomas Mair, a 53-year-old gardener who lived in the area, was charged with her murder.
Prosecutor Richard Whittam said in his opening argument that Mair repeatedly shouted “Britain first” during the attack and said his motives were political.
“It was a cowardly attack by a man armed with a firearm and a knife,” he told the jury of eight men and four women, according to the Daily Telegraph.
He added: “It was a premeditated murder for a political and/or ideological cause.”
Mair is facing separate charges for possessing a gun and a knife. He is also accused of causing bodily harm to Bernard Carter-Kenny, a 77-year-old local man who attempted to intervene in the attack.
The trial was expected to last three weeks after Mair pleaded not guilty to all charges.
Britain First is the name of a far-right political party that campaigns against immigration and what it terms “the Islamization” of the U.K. The organization condemned Cox’s murder and denies any links to Mair.
Jo Cox had only been elected in 2015 and was the first British lawmaker to be killed in office in 26 years. Her death shocked Britain, coming at a time of heightened ethnic and community tensions during the country’s EU membership referendum campaign.