Terror police probe whether British Muslim of Somali descent had extremist links after MP stabbed

The murder of Sir David Amess is being treated as a terror attack ‘linked to Islamist extremism’ as officers raid two homes in London and a British Muslim of Somali descent remains in police custody.

Sir David was holding a constituency surgery when a knifeman ran into the church building and launched a frenzied attack. The 69-year-old politician was wounded at least 12 times, dying at the scene. 

The Met confirmed their Counter Terrorism Command are working with officers from the Eastern Region Specialist Operations Unit (ERSOU) and Essex Police.

Senior National Coordinator for Counter Terrorism Policing, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Dean Haydon formally declared the incident as terrorism.

The force says the early investigation has revealed a potential motivation linked to Islamist extremism.

It is believed that he acted alone, and investigators say they are not looking for anyone else in connection with the incident at this time but say enquiries into the circumstances continue. 

Horrified constituents waiting to see the veteran MP, who has campaigned to help refugees, watched in horror as the assailant leapt on him just after midday.

Reports suggest the knifeman waited calmly in line after booking in at the constituency surgery before launching the fatal attack.

John Lamb, a Conservative councillor who rushed to the church when he heard what had happened, said: ‘He was doing a surgery in the Methodist church here to speak to local people and pick up on their problems.

‘I’m told that when he went in for his surgery there were people waiting to see him, and one of them literally got a knife out and just began stabbing him. 

‘He was with a female member of staff from his constituency office and another female member of staff from his parliamentary office.’

Witnesses described how the knifeman made no attempt to leave the scene and waited for police to arrive.

Kevin Buck, the deputy chairman of the local constituency association, told the Telegraph: ‘I was told that he stabbed Sir David and that he just waited there in the church hall until the police arrived. There was no attempt to flee.’ 

One woman ran out of the Methodist church in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, frantically dialling 999 as she screamed: ‘Someone’s been stabbed, please get here soon, he’s not breathing.’

Sir David, Tory MP for Southend West, collapsed in a pool of blood as the knifeman stood over him, remaining there until police arrived five minutes later to disarm him. Paramedics battled to save his life, but he died just before 3pm.

A much-loved MP and a proud father of five, Sir David gave away his daughter Alex, 31, in marriage just weeks ago.

Witnesses who saw the suspect being arrested on suspicion of murder described him as oddly calm and compliant.

Last night police were seeking to establish a motive for the attack, but announced the counter-terrorism command would lead the investigation.

The shocking attack, which came five years after the murder of MP Jo Cox, ignited a row over the protection of parliamentarians.

Home Secretary Priti Patel responded by ordering an immediate review of security arrangements. Yesterday the family of Mrs Cox, who was shot and stabbed outside her constituency surgery in Birstall, West Yorkshire, by a Right-wing terrorist in June 2016, said Sir David’s murder was an ‘attack on democracy itself’.

Mrs Cox’s husband Brendan said: ‘Attacking our elected representatives is an attack on democracy itself. There is no excuse, no justification. It is as cowardly as it gets.’

Mrs Cox’s sister Kim Leadbeater, who has replaced her as the Labour MP for Batley and Spen, said her partner had asked her to step down from politics.

She said: ‘Totally shocked by what has happened to think that something so horrific could happen again to another MP, to another family. And scared and frightened – a real rollercoaster of emotions.

‘I find myself now working as a politician and trying to do good things for people and it’s really important you get good people in public life, but this is the risk we are all taking and so many MPs will be scared by this.

‘My partner came home and he said he didn’t want me to do it any more because the next time that phone goes, it could be a different conversation.’

Sir David is the sixth MP to be murdered since the Second World War, and the ninth in history.

It is not known whether his wife Julia, who is his part-time caseworker, was in the church at the time. The MP, who was an ardent Brexiteer, was seen laughing and speaking to people on the steps of the church just 15 minutes before he was killed.

Sir David wrote last year about the importance of meeting constituents despite what had happened to Mrs Cox.

He wrote: ‘She was a young woman with a family going about her duties, as we all do, completely unaware of the threat that she faced. While it is often said that good can come out of someone’s death, it is difficult to see what good can come from this senseless murder’.

He also admitted he had been threatened at his home: ‘I myself have over the years experienced nuisance from the odd member of the general public at my own property. We regularly check our locks and many others have CCTV cameras installed but probably the most significant change has been with constituency surgeries.’

Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle said MPs were in shock at what he described as an attack on democracy. He said he wanted to see a greater police presence at constituency surgeries. But he said it was vital that voters were able to engage directly with MPs.

Sir Lindsay said he had gone ahead with his own surgery meeting last night, adding: ‘We cannot afford for democracy to be smashed. The people who do not accept our values will not win. I am shocked and deeply distressed by the killing of Sir David Amess. David was a lovely man, devoted to his family, to parliament and his Southend West constituency.

‘He was well liked by members and the staff alike, and during his almost four decades here, built a reputation for kindness and generosity. We will need to discuss and examine MPs’ security and any measures to be taken.’

Yesterday the Prime Minister paid tribute as there was an outpouring of grief from other MPs.

Boris Johnson said: ‘He was one of the kindest, nicest, most gentle people in politics.’

At a vigil last night more than 100 people packed into St Peter’s Catholic Church in Leigh-on-Sea.

Rev Clifford Newman, the vicar at the Methodist church where the murder took place, said: ‘My thoughts and prayers are with David and Julia, his wife, and the family and the many people he has helped in the past.

‘The local Baptist minister told me that he’s helped refugees.’

First elected in Thatcher’s 1983 landslide, Sir David was one of the longest-serving Tory MPs.

He never made it: MP’s assailant queued to see him… then launched his savage attack

By Sam Greenhill, Arthur Martin, Mario Ledwith and Neil Sears for the Daily Mail

It was as sudden as it was savage. A man pulled out a knife and ‘just began stabbing’ David Amess.

The ferocious attack left the 69-year-old veteran Conservative MP gasping for life on the floor of the church hall.

He was so grievously injured by ‘more than a dozen’ stab wounds that medical staff battling to save him could not stabilise him enough to take him to hospital. After two desperate hours, a helicopter air ambulance which had landed in a nearby field took off again, empty.

Sir David was a committed constituency MP who had devoted his life to meeting local residents and trying to help with their problems.

When he arrived for his regular surgery at Belfairs Methodist Church in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, shortly before midday, several were waiting to see him. John Lamb, a Conservative councillor who rushed to the church when he heard what had happened, said: ‘He was doing a surgery in the Methodist church here to speak to local people and pick up on their problems.

‘I’m told that when he went in for his surgery there were people waiting to see him, and one of them literally got a knife out and just began stabbing him. He was with a female member of staff from his constituency office and another female member of staff from his parliamentary office.’

Speaking outside the church, the shocked councillor said: ‘It has been two hours since it happened, and they are still working on him – he hasn’t been taken to hospital yet.

‘He’s a family man, he’s got four daughters and a son.’

Another witness said the MP had been ‘stabbed quite a few times’, while Sky News reported there were ‘more than a dozen’ knife wounds. The brutal assault on Sir David was over in seconds, but the knifeman does not appear to have been in a hurry to leave the murder scene.

Terrified members of the public dialled 999. Lee Jordison, 40, who works in nearby Hicks butchers, said: ‘It is very shocking. I’ve worked up here and lived up here all my life, and never seen anything like this – it’s terrible.’

Officers from Essex Police were the first to arrive, within five minutes, followed moments later by an armed response unit. They found the 25-year-old suspect still inside the church hall, and also recovered a knife. The alleged killer was led out to a police van.

Anthony Finch, 38, an electrician, said: ‘We arrived to do some work on the adjacent building. I saw an upset lady on the phone saying ‘You need to arrive quickly – he’s still in the building’.

‘I went into the client’s house, and when I came back out there were loads of armed police, and overhead there was an air ambulance as well as a police helicopter. I saw the suspect get put into a police van, get taken away and then they cordoned the whole road, and pushed us all down the road.

‘What we then heard was that it was David Amess. He’s very well thought of in our area – he fights for good causes and sticks up for people around here.’

As word spread, a Roman Catholic priest, Father Jeffrey Woolnough, arrived at the police cordon stretching across tree-lined Eastwood Road North, offering to administer the last rites to the devoutly Catholic MP. He said: ‘The officers said that because it was a crime scene, and also the nature of the scene, it just wasn’t possible.’

Conservative councillor David Garston described Sir David as ‘probably one of the best constituency MPs in the country’, and said: ‘Because he was so accessible, and because he was everywhere, he obviously left himself vulnerable and didn’t think twice about it.

‘You couldn’t get very far [with him] because he’d stop every hundred yards to talk to somebody.’ Another local councillor, James Courtenay, said that surgeries were the MP’s passion and a scheduled hour-long session with constituents often stretched to four or five hours.

Sir David was meant to have been giving a speech at a dinner for the local Conservative association last night in nearby Rochford. Instead, floral tributes were being laid and more than 100 locals attended a vigil. One card left on flowers at the scene read simply: ‘Sir David Amess – RIP –such a gentleman.’

Ben-Julian Harrington, Essex Police’s chief constable, said that officers and paramedics had ‘worked extremely hard to save Sir David’.

Crusader of backbenches who loved Strictly – but not Eurovision… and whose talismanic victory in Basildon in 1992 first told Britain that Major, not Kinnock, would be PM

By David Wilkes for the Daily Mail 

He was known to colleagues as ‘Basildon man’ – and not just because he was a constituency MP through and through.

Sir David Amess first entered political folklore during the 1992 election when his famously Tory Essex seat was expected to fall to Neil Kinnock’s Labour, who many thought was certain to oust John Major’s government.

Yet the moment Basildon flashed up blue, and Sir David’s infectious smile peered out from television screens, Conservatives breathed a deep sigh of relief in the knowledge that the Welsh windbag’s dream of becoming Prime Minister was at an end.

For that reason alone, this genial father of five will always hold a precious place in Tory hearts.

But to Parliamentary colleagues, there was so much more to him than that, personal qualities that made him a vastly popular figure across the political divide.

He was a kind, genial soul, always quick to raise a laugh in the Commons. Watching this deceptively charismatic figure on his feet in the chamber, it was virtually impossible not to take a shine to him.

Rarely, if ever, when called by the Speaker did his polite question not concern his beloved Southend. A long and much-loved campaign to make the Essex seaside town a city now sadly remains unfulfilled.

Even Sir David’s Early Day Motions could raise a giggle around the Commons tea room.

One saluted Ann Widdecombe and Anton du Beke on their ‘achievement in putting a smile on the nation’s faces with their performances’ after their exit from Strictly Come Dancing in 2010.

Another congratulated Dame Helen Mirren – who went to school in his Southend West constituency – on her Oscars triumph in 2007.

The Eurovision song contest, on the other hand, brought out the Brexiteer in him. It was, he claimed, an event ‘designed to humiliate the UK’.

But on the whole, the glitz and glamour of the showbiz world appeared to delight him.

And why wouldn’t it? 

His daughter Katie is a former Miss Essex who went on to become a Bafta-nominated actress and appeared in Hollywood blockbusters such as a Harry Potter film and Captain America: Civil War.

Born in Plaistow (then in Essex, now east London) and raised a Roman Catholic, Sir David was educated at St Bonaventure’s grammar school in Forest Gate and then Bournemouth College of Technology, where he earned a degree in economics and government.

His first job was working as a primary school teacher in London’s East End, teaching at St John the Baptist primary school in Bethnal Green for a year in 1970-71.

He then spent a short time as an underwriter before becoming a recruitment consultant.

By 1983 he was a Tory parliamentary candidate and entered the Commons partly as a result of Margaret Thatcher’s wildly popular policy of letting council tenants buy their homes, a measure that greatly appealed to the citizens of Basildon.

He married his wife Julia in the same year and they went on to have five children – a son and four daughters.

His friend and fellow MP Jerry Hayes, who entered Parliament in the very same year as the Conservative member for the neighbouring constituency of Harlow, says that Sir David never seriously sought high government office. ‘He always believed his true vocation was to represent his constituents in Essex, something he did for 38 years with diligence, skill and good humour,’ he says.

‘David liked to be out and about, pounding the streets of his constituency, speaking up for those who needed his help and advice.

‘Not for him the bullet-proof limousine and a battalion of special advisers. His political outlook was that of a slightly old-fashioned parliamentarian. He spoke up for the ordinary man and woman in his constituency, and of course for animals, about which he cared passionately.

‘I am sorry to say it was precisely this selfless determination that placed him in mortal danger yesterday, and cost him his life.’

During his near four-decade stint in Parliament, Sir David was briefly a ministerial aide, but he held a number of important behind-the-scenes roles and was knighted in 2015 for political and public service.

Politics-wise, Sir David was a staunch Right-winger, having been a Eurosceptic for years before the referendum was held.

It is true that some of his beliefs might be considered deeply unfashionable these days.

The 69-year-old was an opponent of same-sex marriage and, as a devout mass-going Catholic, strongly anti-abortion.

But being the maverick he was, he also took some less traditional Conservative positions, being one of very few Tories to campaign against fox hunting. Controversial viewpoints these may have been, but they never appeared to dull his popularity throughout Westminster. 

In a sign of the affection in which he was held among MPs, Corbynite Paula Sherriff, who was ousted during the 2019 election, broke down in tears on the radio yesterday upon news of Sir David’s death.

‘I loved him,’ Miss Sherriff told Shelagh Fogarty on LBC. ‘David was a wonderful, wonderful man – I have lost a friend today.’

Conservative MP for Harlow, Robert Halfon, also paid tribute to Sir David as ‘a wonderful man’ who was funny, kind and ‘cared about the most disadvantaged in our communities’ and ’embodies Essex’. The fun side of his character often shone through. On December 30 last year, he posted a photo of a cardboard cut-out of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher on Twitter.

He wrote: ‘Whilst Margaret didn’t live long enough to see this day, I am sure that she is rejoicing in heaven. At last we ‘got Brexit done’!’

The Iron Lady put in another surprise appearance this summer when Sir David brought the cut-out to his daughter Alexandra’s wedding.

One episode he preferred to forget occurred in 1997. He was tricked into condemning a made-up drug called ‘Cake’ on the satirical TV programme Brass Eye, developed by comedian Chris Morris.

Last night local councillor James Courtenay paid tribute to his late local MP saying he was ‘a hardcore constituency MP who decided many years ago that he wasn’t looking for career advancement in Westminster’.

Surgeries were ‘his passion’ and a two-hour session could often stretch to four or five hours, Mr Courtenay added.

True to form, Sir David was meant to have been at a dinner for the local Conservative association last night at the Saxon Hall, Rochford, where he was due to give a speech.

It was a speech, tragically, he never got to make.