Zara Aleena’s family says brutal murder has ‘made campaigners out of all of us’

She was sexually assaulted and killed by a recently released offender.

A placard on show during a vigil in Ilford (PA) (PA Wire)

The family of Zara Aleena have described living in a “horror film” after her brutal murder, but said her death had “made campaigners out of all of us”.

Law graduate Ms Aleena,  35, was a “active citizen” who lived by the principles of fairness and justice.

She was sexually assaulted and killed by a recently released offender who Ms Aleena’s family said displayed “extreme indifference” to her life, the law and society.

Speaking as her murderer was jailed for life with a minimum term of 38 yearson Wednesday, Ms Aleena’s aunt Farah Naz said: “We want to get a message across to say this should not have happened.

“Violence must stop towards women. Zara should not have been killed and this was avoidable.

“Zara’s death has made campaigners out of all of us and we will not stop.”

Ms Naz described her niece as “an assertive, outgoing, articulate and funny person”.

She was training to be a solicitor and was known in the movement to end violence against women and girls before she became a victim of it herself.

Ms Naz said: “What she talked about was fairness and justice and that was her real focus – she saw herself as equal to any person.”

Finding out she had been murdered after a night out in Ilford in June, Ms Naz went into “extreme shock, disbelief, anger and paralysis”.

She said: “We have been numb and disbelieving. Even five-and-a-half months later, even after identifying her, even after touching her dead body, even after burying her, it does not compute and we are still in trauma.”

Ms Naz described being stuck in a “loop of disbelief” with images of her niece’s last moments.

She said: “The horror she faced, the pain she must have endured for the length that she was attacked, so brutal what was done to her. We are in this pain.

“Are in this loop. We live in a horror film. We live in something that does not feel real and we keep coming up against walls.

“We think, how did it happen? How did this happen to Zara?

“We are stuck in the film with her, we are watching, our hands are tied and we are not able to save her.”

On how Ms Aleena would be remembered, Ms Naz said: “We don’t want her last hours, her end, to define her.

“Zara means literally radiance and she was the heart of us. The heart of our family. And the heart of her community, the heart of her friends, and that’s how we remember her. That’s what’s been taken, the heart of us.

“I think of her as an ambassador of the end of violence against women and girls. And I think she would be really proud to be that.”

On her niece’s killer, Jordan McSweeney, Ms Naz said: “We see him as someone who has stamped his pain and anger onto Zara and destroyed her with that, and destroyed us. It’s clear he had an intention to rape and kill her, to destroy her.

“He had an extreme indifference to her life and to law and to society’s norms. He had no fear of the consequences. It is clear he is a very dangerous man and so our view is that society needs to be protected from him.

“People were driving on the street, pedestrians were walking and he did what he did that night.”

The family drew strength from the support of people who came together for a vigil a week after her niece’s death.

Ms Naz said: “It brought some faith back for us, some trust that actually there is humanity and people wanted to support us and stand up against violence towards women and that was really fantastic and that made us feel completely held.

“The streets should be safe, Zara should have been allowed to walk home. She should not have been stopped. And the vigil was extremely symbolic. We all held her in our hearts and we walked her home.”

Ms Naz said there were lessons to be learned about how to prevent violence against women and girls in the future.

She said it was wrong to see it as “inevitable” and said there were numerous opportunities for intervention to eradicate it.

She questioned how police could better identify potentially violent offenders.

The general public also have a role to play in preventing attacks, she said.

On the night of Ms Aleena’s murder, her killer had already stalked two lone women and was acting suspiciously yet the police were not alerted.

Ms Naz said: “That night there were women that were harassed and there was no reporting.

“Zara was an active citizen, a Good Samaritan. There is a gap between how we take care of our fellow citizens, all of us.”

Ms Naz also queried the potential causes of violence in society, including the effect of misogynistic pornography on young men.

She went on: “How many excuses are we going to accept for violence towards women? Historically there have been excuses of provocation, excuses of dishonour. Presently we might have excuses of childhood trauma.”

Ms Naz said she had yet to be informed of the results of an inquiry into police and probation involvement in the days between McSweeney’s release from prison and the murder.

But she said: “If he was to be arrested, if there was a warrant for arrest two days before he murdered Zara then of course we are devastated by that news. But we don’t know the full story yet.”