Sabina Nessa case fuels cross-border discussion on violence against women and victims’ rights

London — Four years after Sabina Nessa was killed near her south London home, her sister, Jebina Yasmin Islam, described the moment she learned of the murder and the shock that followed. The killer, Koci Selamaj, had lain in wait for about 20 minutes before grabbing Nessa from behind; he was jailed for life the following April.

Islam spoke to Cosmopolitan and recalled the morning of September 19, 2021, when her husband was on the phone to a sibling—an occurrence she found odd. Looking at her own phone, she realized she had a missed call, and she feared something was seriously wrong. "Something has happened to Sabina," her husband told her. "I couldn’t believe it. I had only spoken to her the other day!" she said, adding, "It’s a lie. They’ve got it wrong." She, her husband and their children drove to her mother’s house, about an hour away, in an effort to keep it together for the sake of their children. The headlong rush was driven by the desperate wish that Sabina might be safe and merely shopping or meeting a friend.

As she searched news sites, Islam described scrolling through stories and gasping at headlines describing the discovery of a body in Kidbrooke. The family ultimately learned the terrible news that Sabina had been attacked just minutes away from her home, at Cator Park, after a dogwalker found her body. “It didn’t make sense; I’d been to that park and it was full of families and kids,” she said later. “She walked through it all the time.”

Selamaj, a garage worker, was arrested on September 26 that year, and investigators seized trainers with Sabina’s blood on them from his home. In the 2022 trial, prosecutors noted that earlier on the day of the killing—September 17—Selamaj had booked a room at The Grand Hotel in Eastbourne, near his home, which prosecutors described as indicative of premeditation for a sexual encounter that evening. About 6 p.m. that day, Selamaj contacted his estranged partner Ionela. In a statement, she said he appeared “very agitated” when they met at his car near the hotel, and she refused his demands and left.

Following Sabina’s murder, Selamaj was arrested in the seaside town and charged with murder a few days later. In a police interview, he made no comment except to deny murdering Sabina. Security camera footage from a London police station showed him holding his head in his hands as he was charged with murder. He later changed his plea to guilty.

Speaking of the trial in her Cosmopolitan interview, Islam said the 2022 proceedings were intense. The court heard how, earlier that day, Selamaj had booked a hotel room and how the trial schedule became a source of frustration for the family. “The trial began in February 2022, and lasted four months. But the next two times we went to court, Selamaj didn’t even bother turning up. I couldn’t get my head around it. Are you telling me that the judge, the lawyers, the prison officers have no power to bring him to court? He gets to stay in his cell, while we’re here listening to everything he did to my sister. How is that okay?” Islam recalled.

She described watching CCTV footage of the moment Sabina was attacked and said she could not bring herself to view it in full. In the clip, a man approaches Sabina from behind and strikes her on the head near a park bench. The court heard how he hit her 34 times with a weapon that broke apart, then dragged her up a slope and out of view for about 10 minutes. He then asphyxiated her and removed her tights and underwear before attempting to cover her body with grass.

In the month after Sabina’s murder, roughly 200 people gathered in Eastbourne to pay tribute and protest the broader crisis of violence against women. The vigil took place amid public outrage and debate over women’s safety and policing in the wake of Sarah Everard’s murder by a serving Met Police officer. During Selamaj’s sentencing, Judge Mr Justice Sweeney addressed him in absentia, saying Sabina Nessa was a wholly blameless victim of an absolutely appalling murder, which was entirely the defendant’s fault, a statement that underscored the broader sense of insecurity in cities, particularly for women walking alone at night. "She had every right, as her family say, to be walking through the park all glammed up and going to enjoy herself after a long week of work. She died in a way that no one should. It is not suggested by him that he has any remorse for what he did to Sabina Nessa."

Speaking of her sister’s legacy, Islam told Cosmopolitan she had begun work on a campaign she calls Sabina’s Law. The proposal would require people who commit serious crimes such as rape and murder to come to the sentence hearing and face what they have done; if they fail to attend, they could face an extra two years in prison. "People may think, ‘He’s got a life sentence, what’s an additional two years?’ but if you went through what we went through, you would understand it means a lot," she said. MPs have signaled agreement on the principle of this law, but they are still debating its details. "With this new law in place, I’m hoping that it will help victims’ families feel their voices are heard," Islam added. "There are hundreds of women like Sabina, whose lives are stolen from them for no other reason than because they are women. There are so many families like ours who are left living under the shadow of that grief."