Murdered teacher case would have got more attention if 'normal white family', says sister

Sabina Nessa’s sister has said the case would have got more attention if they had been a “normal British white family”.

Ms Nessa, a primary school teacher, was murdered at random by Koci Selamaj as she walked through a London park in September. He was jailed last week for at least 36 years.

Jebina Yasmin Islam said the case had initially not got as much media coverage as the murder of Sarah Everard, who was killed by a serving police officer.

She also claimed Home Secretary Priti Patel had used her sister’s name for “publicity”.

“My sister didn’t get as much headlines, I feel, at the start. Maybe was it down to her ethnicity?” she told the BBC’s Today programme.

“She didn’t get the front pages on some of the papers, and in Sarah Everard’s case she did. I think it’s just down to our ethnicity, to be honest.

“And I feel like if we were a normal British white family we would have been treated equally, I guess.”

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Ms Islam said her MP, Clive Efford, had given support but that the government had not helped and that other “higher up people” had been “useless”.

“They’ve not said nothing,” she said.

“Priti Patel has done a tweet on Friday and I was not happy about it because all of a sudden she’s using my sister’s name for publicity reasons. And to be honest she has no right.”

The home secretary called Ms Nessa’s killer an “evil monster” in the post, and that she hoped his sentence would bring “small comfort” to her family.

In a follow-up tweet she added that tackling violence against women was “central to my Beating Crime Plan…(to) make our streets safer for everyone”.

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Selamaj, 36, – who battered his victim 34 times with a metal traffic triangle before strangling her – refused to appear for sentencing.

Ms Nessa’s sister said perpetrators should be forced to “come into court and listen”.

She told the BBC: “I was frustrated. We were like, ‘He is such a coward, not facing up to what he has done’.

“It made me angry because I wanted him to hear our impact statement to show how much hurt he’s caused my family.”

Ms Nessa, 28, taught at Rushey Green Primary School in Catford, and was found near a community centre in the park the day after she was murdered.

The trial judge said she was the “wholly blameless victim of an absolutely appalling murder which was entirely the fault of the defendant”.

It is thought she walked through the park because she was running late to meet a friend.

Speaking last week about her sister’s murder, Ms Islam said it had “broken us deeply”.

“How does a parent accept the fact that their daughter at the age of 28 is no more? How do you accept that? Because you can’t and it’s just a bad dream and you just wish that it wasn’t true.”

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