The family of Zara Aleena, who was sexually assaulted and murdered in east London while walking home after a night out, has been “tortured” by thoughts her death was preventable – and that a “crumbling justice system” contributed to it.
As a jury-led inquest into the death of the 35-year-old law graduate opened at Walthamstow coroner’s court on Monday, her aunt Farah Naz read a statement saying: “Since her death we have been campaigning so that our daughters, sisters, friends can be safe and protected as Zara never was. This is Zara’s legacy.”
Jordan McSweeney killed Aleena early on 26 June 2022 and was handed a life sentence with a minimum term of 38 years at the Old Bailey in December 2022 after admitting her murder and sexual assault. He later won a court of appeal bid to reduce the minimum term of his life sentence.
He murdered Aleena in Ilford nine days after he was released from prison on licence on 17 June 2022 and, after breaching the conditions of his licence, a decision had been made to recall him to prison on 24 June 2022.
Naz told the jury the family was “tortured with the thought Zara’s death was preventable”, adding that her niece’s murder highlighted the “crumbling justice system (which is) meant to protect us”.
She spoke of her niece’s “sparkling eyes and curly jet black hair” and “glorious laughter”. Aleena was a carer for her mother and grandmother, “the rock of our family” and it was the “proudest moment for all of us” when she was offered a job as a legal assistant at the Royal Courts of Justice.
She was “a carefree spirit with the most caring heart” and had worked to help resettle refugees in the UK. “2022 was to be her year to live her wildest dreams. She wanted to buy her own home, find Mr Right and to have children. The future looked bright,” her aunt said.
She added: “Zara walked everywhere and one night she walked home from an evening out with a friend, she was sexually assaulted and murdered. She was 35 years old.
“She believed that a woman should be allowed to walk home, and her dreams, her future was brutally taken.”
The area coroner, Nadia Persaud, said the purpose of the inquest was to “consider the circumstance by which Zara came by her death, which will include whether any actions or omissions of state bodies contributed to her death”.
The jury was told that McSweeney was 29 at the time of the attack and had received his first custodial sentence at the age of 13, with much of his adult years spent in prison or in the community under licence.
Persaud, reading a statement from a consultant forensic pathologist, said the cause of Aleena’s death was blunt force head injury and neck compression.
The inquest continues.
