How killing of Labour MP Jo Cox isn’t the first attack on a British politician
Tragic shooting is a reminder of previous attacks on our parliamentarians
THE attack on Jo Cox has chilling echoes of the May 2010 attempted murder of Labour MP Stephen Timms.
Roshonara Choudhry, then 27, stabbed him twice in the stomach at his constituency surgery in Newham, east London.
Her Old Bailey trial heard she was a follower of al-Qaeda extremist Anwar al-Awlaki and targeted Mr Timms because he voted for the Iraq war.
She made an appointment to see the East Ham MP, who thought she was reaching out to shake his hand when she plunged the knife into his abdomen.
Mr Timms, now 60, said afterwards: “She looked friendly.
“She was smiling, if I remember rightly then lunged at me with her right hand.
“I think I knew that I had been stabbed although I didn't feel anything and I can't recall actually seeing a knife but I think I said 'She has a knife' or words to that effect.”
His assistant Andrew Bazeley managed to get the blade off her and she was restrained until cops arrived.
When police arrested and quizzed her she revealed she had brought two kitchen knives with her in case one broke.
During her court case Choudhry, a student, refused to attend the trial but appeared via videolink for the sentencing.
She had ordered her defence team not to challenge the prosecution's case and said she did not recognise the British court.
She was convicted of attempted murder and jailed for life. Judge Mr Justice Cooke told her: "You said you ruined the rest of your life. You said it was worth it. You said you wanted to be a martyr.
"You intended to kill in a political cause and to strike at those in government by doing so.
"You do not suffer from any mental disease. You have simply committed evil acts coolly and deliberately.”
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In January 2000, maniac Robert Ashman, 50, tried to kill Lib Dem MP Nigel Jones with a samurai sword at his constituency office in Cheltenham.
The 52-year-old MP, now Lord Jones, was slashed in the stomach and needed 57 stitches for severe cuts to his hands from the struggle to fend off the assailant.
His researcher Andrew Pennington, 39, was stabbed six times and died.
Ashman was ruled insane but was freed just eight years later.
The shooting also has echoes of the attempted murder of US Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords at a constituency meeting in Tuscon, Arizona, in January 2011.
The Democrat politician's stalker Jared Lee Loughner pulled out a pistol and shot her in the head before firing on the crowd.
Six people died including one of her staff, a judge and a nine-year-old girl.
Ms Giffords survived despite appalling injuries and now campaigns on gun issues.
She tweeted today: "Absolutely sickened to hear of the assassination of Jo Cox.
"She was young, courageous, and hardworking.
"A rising star, mother, and wife."
Jo Cox is believed to be the first MP to be killed in office since Tory Ian Gow was assassinated by the IRA in 1990.
The Eastbourne MP knew he was an IRA target but refused security measures and insisted his address and phone number be in the local directory.
In July 1990 a bomb was planted under his Austin Montego, which blew him up on the driveway of his home near Pevensey, East Sussex.
He was the last of a string of politicians murdered by Republican terrorists.
Enfield Southgate MP Anthony Berry was one of five who died in the IRA Brighton Hotel bomb during the Tory party conference in 1984.
The Ulster Unionist Party's Belfast South MP Robert Bradford was shot dead by IRA assassins while hosting a political surgery.
The caretaker of the community centre was also killed.
And in 1979, Republican group the INLA claimed responsibility for the assassination of Airey Neave, then the shadow Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.
Mr Neave, a war hero who was the first British officer to successfully escape from the notorious POW camp Colditz Castle, was blown up in his Vauxhall Cavalier as he left the Houses of Parliament and died later in hospital.
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