had been released<\/a> and was no longer part of the investigation.<\/p>\n“At this time, there is still no information to suggest that this is a terrorism related incident and as a force we retain primacy of the investigation,” the police said.<\/p>\n
Devon and Cornwall Police Assistant Chief Constable Matt Longman said earlier officers thought Widdecombe was attacked 24 hours before her body was found.<\/p>\n
“We believe the attack took place on Wednesday 8 July at around 12.30pm,” he said in the statement, adding that police had been searching for a white male suspect.<\/p>\n
Longman had said on Friday he “had no information to say it was a politically motivated crime” and her death was not being treated as terror-related.<\/p>\n
“Detectives continue to carry out numerous enquiries as part of the ongoing investigation and we remain committed to establishing the full circumstances surrounding the incident.”<\/p>\n
Widdecombe, a Conservative MP from 1987 to 2010, was known for her Christian faith and outspoken views.<\/p>\n
In 1995 as prisons minister she was embroiled in a row after defending a policy of chaining pregnant prisoners to prevent them from escaping.<\/p>\n
A staunch supporter of Brexit, Widdecombe left the Conservatives in 2019 to join the hard-right party of anti-immigration leader Nigel Farage.<\/p>\n
Farage on Friday called her death a “terrible reflection on modern Britain”, in a video on social media.<\/p>\n
“I do fear that for anybody in public life, or especially the political space, things have become even more dangerous today,” Farage said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"British police have arrested a suspect over the alleged murder of veteran right-wing politician Ann Widdecombe, hours after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":520802,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-522284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=522284"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522284\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/520802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=522284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=522284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=522284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}