Jihad
Stephen Timms, the Labour MP for East Ham and a practising Christian, was stabbed by a Muslim woman as a ‘punishment for Iraq’, a court found.
In a Daily Telegraph report from the Old Bailey courtroom, the judge heard that Roshonara Choudhry, aged 21, approached Mr Timms while he was doing a local ministerial surgery.
Concealing a knife as she came to meet him, she stabbed him twice in the abdomen, causing potentially fatal injuries, before she was disarmed by the MP’s assistant.
According to the Telegraph, she had just six months previously turned from being a moderate Muslim enjoying her English degree studies into a fully-fledged al-Qaeda operative, after listening to the sermons of Islamic cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, readily available on YouTube.
The court heard that Choudhry dropped out of college in April, which was when she had decided to devote her life to al-Qaeda, having spent countless hours with her computer listening to al-Awlaki’s calls to jihad.
The court heard that she began to research the voting records of MPs, concentrating on former Labour ministers Jim Fitzpatrick, Margaret Hodge, Nick Raynsford and Mr Timms, all of whom had backed the Iraq war.
She selected Mr Timms as her target and made an appointment to see him at 2.45pm on May 14, whereupon she stabbed him with one of two kitchen knives she had brought with her. The two-day trial ended with a ‘guilty’ verdict and a life sentence for Choudhry.
