Law enforcement officers specializing in counter-terrorism have taken over the investigation into last week’s murder of a prominent conservative politician in the U.K.
“The police are pursuing multiple lines of inquiry to establish the motivation for this attack,” Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said Monday of the probe into the killing of Ann Widdecombe, the BBC reports.
Widdecombe was a driving force behind the country’s 2016 “Brexit” decision to leave the European Union. Authorities arrested a 28-year-old white British man, from South Yorkshire in north England, on Saturday in connection with her murder, which took place on Thursday at her home in Devon, in the west of England.
An official with the Counter Terrorism Policing unit confirmed on Monday that the suspect has now been re-arrested “on suspicion of commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism.”
Developments in what police describe as a “dynamic and complex investigation” come after the release of CCTV footage, first obtained by The Sun, showing the suspect getting into a red car outside a house in Rotherham, South Yorkshire.
The video appears to show the man, armed with what may have been a wooden baton, jamming it into the pocket of his shorts. Sources told the newspaper that Widdecombe’s cause of death was “severe blunt trauma to the head.”
Her assistant found her body around 11.30 p.m. on Thursday evening, though she is thought to have died almost 11 hours earlier. The slaying sparked a nationwide manhunt. Police arrested the suspect in Rotherham, almost 270 miles away from the scene of the crime in Devon, shortly before 10 p.m. on Saturday.
Mahmood said she plans to update Parliament on the status of the investigation later on Monday. Politicians from across the political divide have expressed shock and outrage at the killing.
Outgoing Prime Minister Keir Starmer described her death as “a huge, huge loss” and said he had spoken to Conservative Party Leader Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage, the founder of Reform U.K., of which Widdecombe was a member, to urge unity in the wake of her killing.
Farage, a Trump ally, has described Widdecombe as “the fiercest defender of free speech” and a “remarkable individual.”
