Zara Aleena’s aunt has told of her family’s “profound loss” after her niece’s life was “senselessly and brutally crushed” by a sexual predator in Essex in the summer.
Jordan McSweeney, 29, was sentenced to life in jail with a minimum term of 38 years for the murder and sexual assault of the law graduate on Wednesday.
Speaking outside court after sentencing, Farah Naz said: “Today’s sentencing protects the public from a man who cannot and must not live freely in the world.
“His extreme indifference towards Zara‘s life and to the law makes him a very dangerous man.
“We have some retribution but no peace,” Ms Naz told reporters through stifled tears.
“There are questions to be answered still and there are lessons to be learned, and changed to be made.
“Zara was the light, the warmth, the birdsong, the laughter in our family. We live with a profound loss each day. And each day, we are destroyed a little more.
“We are touched by the kindess we have felt from so many - and this is testament to the power of Zara’s spirit.
“Today and every other day, we live with the horror she was forced to face,” she concluded.
Ms Aleena was targeted by McSweeney on Cranbrooke Road, Ilford, east London as she walked home from a night out early on Sunday 26 June. She was dragged into a driveway, brutally kicked, stamped on and sexually assaulted, then left for dead.
Emergency services were called at 2.44am after she was found with severe head injuries and struggling to breathe. Ms Aleena was taken to hospital where she died later that morning from multiple injuries.
Last month, McSweeney, 29, of Dagenham, Essex, pleaded guilty to her murder and sexual assault.
The sexual predator had refused to come to the Old Bailey for his sentencing today, however. The court was told he had declined to come up from the cells because he did not want to watch CCTV footage capturing what he commited.
Ahead of sentencing, Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb said McSweeney carried out his crimes with “sickening deliberation.”
She later said his decision not to attend his own sentencing “shows the man who took Ms Aleena’s life has no spine whatsoever.”
A series of devastating impact statements were read out to the court on Wednesday, including from Ms Naz, who described her niece as having a “strong sense of justice and strong moral compass”. She said her niece “brought a zest to our lives, joy, colour and light”.
Ms Naz, who sat alongside her family members as the details of Ms Aleena’s vicious murder were read out, also told of how the family had been left feeling unsafe in the community, and forced to constantly look over their shoulders for possible signs of danger.
Ms Aleena’s aunt spoke at length of her niece’s “senseless, merciless, brutal, attack”, and said she was taking a stand to help “deepen understanding of how a family is destroyed in such a short time”.
Speaking in court, Ms Naz said: “We lost her and more. When a human is murdered, a family is murdered. And when a human is murdered, humanity is murdered.
“Everything she was, everything she worked so hard for, every dream was destroyed by someone she did not even know, someone else’s sense of entitlement. “She was just walking home.”
Ms Aleena’s elderly grandmother Rashda Parveen sobbed as she read out her victim statement in court, saying she hoped the killer “would never find peace”.
Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb said the sentencing should go ahead in McSweeney’s absence on Wednesday, saying Ms Aleena’s family, who were present, should not have to wait any longer.
In his absence, George Carter-Stephenson, defending, told the court the killer was “truly for sorry for what he has done”.
Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb queried: “Where is the evidence of that?”
Mr Carter-Stephenson said it was what he had been instructed by his client to convey.
The senior judge replied: “That is not evidence I am prepared to accept.”
Mr Carter-Stephenson added that his remorse was demonstrated by his guilty plea and McSweeney had said that “when he thinks about it, it makes him feel sick”.
The judge adjourned the court briefly to consider the sentencing. She give the defence team the opportunity to see McSweeney in the cells and try to persuade him to come up to receive his sentence.
In a televised sentencing on Wednesday, Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb jailed him in his absence for life with a minimum term of 38 years.
Ms Aleena was a talented and spirited woman, the judge said, adding: “The defendant had the advantage of strength and surprise. In everything else, she was better than him.
“She was simply a happy, healthy woman living her life in what most Londoners think of as the best city in the world.”
Jordan McSweeney was caught on CCTV drunkenly lurching in the street after being ejected from a pub for pestering a female member of staff.
He followed three women and confronted a fourth before he ”fixated” on 35-year-old Ms Aleena.
The attack lasted nine minutes and resulted in 46 separate injuries.
Afterwards, McSweeney took some of Ms Aleena’s clothes, keys and purse which he threw away with the same “disdain” he had treated his victim, prosecutor Oliver Glasgow KC said.
McSweeney has 28 previous convictions for 69 separate offences including burglary, theft of a vehicle, criminal damage, assaulting police officers and assaulting members of the public while on bail.
On her niece’s killer, 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.
“He had an extreme indifference to her life and to law and to society’s norms. He had no fear of the consequences.”
Ms Naz described her niece as an “active citizen” who was “assertive, outgoing, articulate and funny”.
She 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.”
