UK

Vigils held across Britain for Sabina Nessa amid outcry over teacher’s killing

‘Our world is shattered. We are simply lost for words,’ Sabina’s sister tells gathering

A vigil at Pegler Square in London for teacher Sabina Nessa. Photograph: Rob Pinney/Getty Images

Sat Sep 25 2021 - 22:01

Emotional vigils were held on Friday for a teacher who was found murdered in a London park last week, highlighting again public anger over violence against women.

Sabina Nessa (28) left her home in south London on the evening of September 17th to make the short walk through a local park to a bar where she was due to meet a friend. She never arrived and her body was found in the park the next afternoon.

Vigils were held in the local area and across Britain to remember Nessa and to highlight violence against women.

"Our world is shattered. We are simply lost for words," her sister Jebina Yasmin Islam said at a vigil near the crime scene.

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“No family should go through what we are going through.”

British prime minister Boris Johnson said his thoughts were with Nessa's family and friends at this "deeply distressing time", while Kate, Duchess of Cambridge, said she was "saddened by the loss of another innocent young woman on our streets".

Women have spoken out about their sadness and anger over inaction in ending violence against women after a series of murders that have shocked the UK.

Sarah Everard was abducted, raped and murdered in south London in March by a police officer, while a British teenager was found guilty in July of killing sisters Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman in a northwest London park last year.

“Women are repeatedly expected to change their behaviour to reduce personal risk, shifting responsibility away from the decisions and the actions of men,” local councillor Denise Scott-McDonald said at the vigil near the latest crime scene.

“Sabina was a teacher, a friend, a sister. She is the latest in a painful, long list of women attacked on our streets.”

Detectives are urgently seeking a man captured in CCTV images taken close to where Nessa was found dead.

The man in the footage, who is seen dressed in casual clothing and apparently clutching a red or orange object in his right hand, was in the area of southeast London where Nessa was found dead on the evening she was attacked, police said.

A 12-second clip released on Friday by the Metropolitan Police shows the balding man wearing a black hooded coat and grey jeans looking over his shoulder and pulling at his hood as he walks down a footpath.

Two men arrested in connection with the killing have been released under further investigation. – Reuters/Guardian

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