On 14 May 2010, Stephen Timms, the Labour MP for East Ham, was stabbed whilst holding a constituency surgery by Roshonara Choudhry, a 21-year-old British student and an Islamic extremist, in an attempt to kill him.

She was the eldest child and attended Plashet School in East Ham, later studying for her A-levels at Newham Sixth Form College.

[4] She had been in the final year of a degree in English and communications at King's College London,[2][5][6] but had dropped out shortly before the attempt on Timms' life.

[5] In a police interview, she stated that she had left because she found the university to be anti-Islamic, since they had given an award to the Israeli politician and statesman Shimon Peres, in addition to running counter-radicalisation programmes.

[11] She made "very full admissions" to the police, saying that she had been influenced by dozens of hours of sermons that she had watched of Anwar al-Awlaki, a leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

[14] After the sentence was announced in court, a group of men in the public gallery began shouting "Allahu akbar" and "British go to hell."