Neo-Nazi in Charlottesville attack given life sentence

An American neo-Nazi who killed an activist when he rammed his car into a group of counter-protesters during a white supremacist rally was ordered jailed for life without possibility of parole on Friday.

James Alex Fields Jr, 22, had pleaded guilty to 29 federal hate crimes charges in March in a deal with prosecutors that eliminated the possibility of a death sentence.

The charges were linked to the 29 people wounded when he drove his car through a crowd in Charlottesville, Virginia on August 12, 2017, when he killed 32-year-old paralegal Heather Heyer.

"As a result of this act of domestic terrorism that was charged as 29 hate crimes, a United States district judge this afternoon determined that Mr Fields deserved to spend the rest of his life in federal prison and imposed that sentence," said US Attorney Thomas Cullen.

According to the local CBS6 news channel, Judge Michael Urbanski said Fields was "a profoundly disturbed young man" with a history of violence and releasing him back into society would be "too great a risk to take."