Christina Annesley has been named online as the British national whose body was found on the holiday island of Koh Tao

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

A UK backpacker has been found dead on the same Thai island where two British tourists were murdered last year.

Christina Annesley has been named online as the Briton whose body was found on the holiday island of Koh Tao on Wednesday.

A Foreign Office spokesperson said: “We can confirm the death of a British national in Thailand on 21 January 2014. We are providing consular assistance to the family at this difficult time.”

The 23-year-old is reported to have been on the island, where Hannah Witheridge and David Miller were murdered last September, when she posted her last tweet on Monday. Details of Annesley’s death are still unknown.

Friends paid tribute on social media to Annesley’s “riotous sense of humour and her infectious mischief” and her politically active life. Annesley was a former deputy chair of YI (Young Independence) Yorkshire, the youth wing of Ukip. One friend, Victoria Adams, posted a photo of the two friends together, saying: “God has all the gin, sunshine and Anarchocapitalism waiting for you” while another wrote that the death of the “brilliant girl, and a great campaigner” was “absolutely tragic”, adding that she was “funny, charming – a real livewire”.

Annesley, a former administrative assistant for Dow Jones, stood down as Ukip deputy in Yorkshire in January 2013 in support of Olly Neville, the leader of the youth wing of Ukip, who was fired after stating that he backed gay marriage.

In a 2013 interview for Kentish Tory, the history graduate from Leeds University described herself as “an anarcho-capitalist” who is “as free-market as it’s possible to be”.

Annesley’s LinkedIn page said she planned to travel around south-east Asia and Australia between January and April 2015 before starting a master’s degree in English literature in September 2015.

Her death comes less than a month after a trial date was set for two men accused of murdering Witheridge, 23, and Miller, 24, on the same island last year.

The Britons were found dead on a Koh Tao beach on 15 September 2014. An autopsy revealed that both had died from head wounds during an attack.

The two Burmese men accused of their murder, Win Zaw Htun and Zaw Lin, both 21, retracted their original confessions, saying they had made their statements after being beaten and threatened by police officers.

In court proceedings that opened on 26 December 2014, both men pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiracy to murder. A trial date has been set for 8 July.