Widdecombe Suspect Still Held as a Separate Arrest Is Made Over Online Abuse
The man arrested over the killing of Ann Widdecombe remains in custody without charge this evening, held under a Terrorism Act warrant while Counter Terrorism Policing leads the investigation; officers stress it has not been declared a terrorist incident. In a separate case, Police Scotland arrested and charged a 50-year-old man over social-media comments said to celebrate her death, with a report to go to the procurator fiscal. No motive has been established in the killing, and reporting restrictions limit what can be said while proceedings are active.
The case sits in the careful legal silence that follows an arrest but precedes a charge: Counter Terrorism Policing is examining whether Widdecombe was targeted for her politics, but no motive has been confirmed, no one has been charged with her killing, and the incident has not been formally declared an act of terrorism. Coming after the murders of Jo Cox in 2016 and Sir David Amess in 2021, a third killing of a serving or former parliamentarian in a decade weighs heavily on a political class already anxious about its safety. The separate Scottish arrest, over comments celebrating a violent death, is a reminder of how quickly such killings curdle the wider public mood online. With the promised review of MPs’ security still to come, the questions are about protection and about the tenor of political life. Watch the charging decision, what investigators establish about motive, and the substance of the new security measures.