LONDON, July 20 (Reuters) – British prosecutors said on Monday that a 28-year-old man had been charged with murdering former government minister Ann Widdecombe who was found dead at her home earlier this month.
Widdecombe, 78, who was a prominent member of Nigel Farage’s populist Reform UK, was found at her home in rural southwest England on July 9 after sustaining what police described as serious injuries. She stood down from parliament in 2010.
Joshua Kerry, a white British national from northern England, has been charged with her killing, Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service said. He will appear at London’s Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Tuesday.
“Police enquiries into the defendant’s motives are ongoing, including a potential political or terrorist connection,” Frank Ferguson, Chief Crown Prosecutor of the CPS Special Crime and Counter Terrorism Division, said in a statement.
Police have previously said they believed that Widdecombe had been clearly targeted.
Widdecombe was known for her socially conservative views, first as a junior minister in Conservative Prime Minister John Major’s 1992-1997 government and latterly as an immigration and justice spokesperson for Reform.
She converted to Catholicism partly in protest at the Church of England’s ordination of women as priests and was opposed to abortion and to equalising the age of consent for homosexual and heterosexual relationships.
(Reporting by Michael Holden; editing by William James)
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