- Friday, April 26, 2024
By: Sarwar Alam
Scotland Yard has launched an investigation into a crowdfunding page set up online seeking funds to hire a ‘contract killer’ for Gina Miller, the prominent Indian-origin anti-Brexit campaigner who has won two major landmark court rulings over Parliament supremacy.
The 53-year-old investment fund manager, born Gina Nadira Singh in British Guiana (now Guyana) to Guyana’s former Attorney-General Doodnauth Singh, was targeted on a Go Fund Me website page, which has since been taken down.
“Officers from the Met’s South West CID team are currently investigating a report of threats to kill,” a Metropolitan Police statement said.
GoFundMe was set up as a crowdfunding platform as a way for people to raise funds for worthy causes.
But the one targeting Miller called for donations so that £10,000 could be raised to “to hire a contract killer to kill Gina Miller. The Traitor of Democracy”.
It had reportedly been online since April this year before being taken down recently.
“This is horrifying. It beggars belief that this can have been allowed to have been put up on this site and stayed there for so long,” Miller told Sunday Mirror.
“There is of course no excuse for any individual to resort to inciting murder, but it shows how bad things have got. Certain extremist politicians and commentators must take their share of responsibility and recognise that incendiary language – and continually ratcheting up the stakes – has consequences,” she said.
A GoFundMe spokesperson said: “We are particularly sorry for any distress this caused Gina Miller.”
Miller has previously spoken about dealing with death threats constantly over her tough stance for UK MPs, as representatives of the British public, to have the final say on Brexit decisions.
A man named Rhodri Philipps was jailed for 12 weeks in 2017 after he put up a post on Facebook offering £5,000 to “the first person to ‘accidentally’ run her over.
Miller first hit the headlines after she forced former British prime minister Theresa May to seek a parliamentary vote before triggering Article 50 to set the clock on Britain’s exit from the European Union (EU).
Last month, she was behind the successful legal action to stop May”s successor, Boris Johnson, suspending Parliament in the midst of crucial Brexit debates.
“It is a win for Parliamentary sovereignty, the separation of powers and independence of our British courts,” Miller said, following her latest High Court battle in September.
The UK is scheduled to leave the EU by October 31 but Parliament has failed to agree on any deal that would make that possible.
While Johnson has continued to insist that he plans to meet the month-end deadline, the EU has agreed to an extension – the length of which is to be decided early next week.
