Bureaucracy prevented me from meeting al-Qaeda radical who stabbed me, deputy says

Labor MP Sir Stephen Timms was stabbed by the «radicalized» Roshonara Chowdhry. Al-Qaeda Photo: REUTERS/Stephen Hird

The Labor Supreme MP said he wanted to meet with the al-Qaeda radical who stabbed him, but the state bureaucracy is preventing it.

Sir Stephen Timms, a veteran advocate and former minister, was attacked by Roshonara Chowdhry during a constituency in 2010. forgive her if they ever meet.

The longtime MP said he has entered into a process of restorative justice that includes bringing criminals and their victims together. His goal is to help victims get answers and allow offenders who need to be released to take responsibility for their crimes and adjust to society.

But Sir Stephen told The Camille Tomini Show on GB News that in his case «unfortunately it kind of stalled and I don't know why.»

«He's stuck in a bureaucracy somewhere and doesn't seem to be moving forward at the moment,» he told the broadcaster. «I'm still hoping that someone at the DOJ can finally get things off the ground, and it might be possible, but not yet.»

Asked if he would forgive her if they met , he replied: “It is quite possible, but without any communication, I don’t think it would really mean anything.”

Recently, the police handed over to Sir Stephen three letters that Chowdhry wrote to him from prison where she is serving a life sentence for attempted murder. In the third and most recent Labor MP, she apologized for the attack.

A «radicalized» student, aged 21 at the time, attacked him during an election operation at the Beckton Globe Library in his East Ham constituency.

The Iraq War

She hit the former finance minister twice with a six-inch kitchen stabbed in the stomach for voting for the Iraq War while serving under Sir Tony Blair.

Recalling the May 14, 2010 incident, he said he thought she would come to shake his hand and at first «wasn't sure she succeeded» in stabbing him. It wasn't until he reached the restroom and lifted his shirt that he saw «quite a lot of blood.»

Doctors told him his injuries were «life-threatening, but not life-threatening in the immediate area», and he spent five days in the hospital after surgery.

Sir Stephen had previously said that the attack ultimately «strengthened» his relationship with Muslim voters and that MPs should not «disappear behind barriers.»

Two MPs have been killed while serving in the constituency in the past seven years.

Jo Cox, a Labor MP, was shot and stabbed several times while on her way to a meeting in her constituency of Batley and Spen in West Yorkshire, June 2016. Thomas Mair, who attacked her, was a far-right white supremacist.

In October 2021, Sir David Amess, the Conservative MP for Southend West, was stabbed and killed in district surgery in Lea- he-Sea, Essex.