Cowering Sabina Nessa killer should suffer for life… just like her grieving family will
WHEN it came to being sentenced for the cold-blooded murder of teacher Sabina Nessa, her killer Koci Selamaj “refused” to attend court last week.
Begging the question: Why the hell didn’t two burly prison guards take an armpit each and yank him there?
Instead, he was allowed to exercise his human right to stay away and, consequently, not face Sabina’s devastated parents as they read out their heart-breaking victim impact statement.
“You are not a human being. You are an animal,” they concluded. Indeed he is. And the impact of his brutality is far-reaching.
Headteacher Lisa Williams, says of Sabina’s Year One class: “For the rest of their lives, these young children will never be able to comprehend why someone murdered their teacher and the world in which they live is not safe for them to play in a park.”
Selamaj, 36, waited for a lone woman — any woman — to pass him as he lay in wait in a South East London park on September 17 last year.
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It just happened to be 28-year-old Sabina, on her way to the pub for a first date.
Attacking her from behind, he bludgeoned her on the head with a metal traffic triangle 34 times before dragging her in to the undergrowth then stripping and strangling her.
She was a much-loved daughter and sister with so much life ahead of her, and it was snuffed out in seconds in an attack so random that her poor family must torment themselves endlessly with “if onlys”.
And now they’ve had to face the injustice of his refusal to turn up and face them as he was jailed for “life” with a minimum term of 36 years.
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How can that be allowed to happen in a country that has pledged serious action to try to minimise the epidemic of violence against women?
Following Sarah Everard’s murder at the hands of serving police officer Wayne Couzens in March last year, Met Commissioner Cressida Dick said that while it was “incredibly rare” for a woman to be abducted from our streets, she understood that women “will be worried and may well be feeling scared”.
She’s damn right.
And that fear has escalated further following the murders of Sabina and 18-year-old Bobbi-Anne McLeod.
Bobbi-Anne was on her way to meet her boyfriend when she was snatched from a Plymouth bus stop at around 6.30pm last November and bundled into the vehicle of 24-year-old stranger Cody Ackland who, after “a prolonged attack with a blunt instrument”, dumped her body in woodland seven miles away.
Having pleaded guilty to her murder, he will be sentenced on May 19 by Judge Robert Linford, who told him it will be a “life” sentence, with the only issue the length of minimum term Ackland would serve before being eligible for parole.
Meanwhile, cop Wayne Couzens was given a rare, whole-life term because he abused his position of public trust — but he is appealing the sentence next month to try to get it reduced.
Enough already.
All of these were cold-blooded murders by complete strangers on young women just going about their daily life until it was brutally taken away from them.
What’s to discuss?
Forget the minimums, they should all be on whole-life terms — just like the life sentences they have imposed on the bereaved families of their victims.
Equally, they should be forced to stand in front of those families at sentencing and hear what they have to say, rather than cower in their cell and punish them further with their absence.
Monsters like these should have no rights at all.
Haven a clue, Boris
ALL credit to Boris for making the trip to Ukraine as a gesture of solidarity with the country’s President Zelensky.
But now he’s back, it’s time to get his teeth into sorting out the visa mess that’s crippling efforts to house fleeing Ukrainians in the UK.
Thousands of families are finding that the lifeline offered by Brits remains tantalisingly out of reach thanks to over-zealous council officials hampering the visa process.
One potential host was told her home was unsuitable because there is no guard rail on the stairs, while another was told the same because of a one-inch step outside the bathroom.
Meanwhile, a council worker in Gloucestershire measured every room in a seven-bed, 5,300 sq ft mansion to check that it was big enough.
Words fail me. These poor people are running for their lives as their homes are bombed around them and they have to wait for a handrail to be put in?
If councils are worried about being sued under the “elf and safety” regulations, I’m sure that the arriving families will happily sign a disclaimer form in exchange for safe lodgings.
Totes crazy
RUSSIAN socialites have been cutting up their Chanel handbags after the famous designer shut its stores in the country amid “growing concerns” about the war in Ukraine.
Using the hashtag #byebyechanel, the women accused the French luxury fashion house of being “Russophobic”.
As Chanel has already had their money, I wouldn’t imagine it gives a merde.
Harry play games
WELL, well, well.
After missing Prince Philip’s memorial service for “security reasons”, it seems the Duke and Duchess of Sussex are to travel to the Netherlands for the Invictus Games this weekend.
Former Met Police Inspector Ken Wharfe, who helped guard Princes William and Harry, says: “It is more of a risk to go to Holland to support a charity with a military link than come to London.”
Quite.
Perhaps confirming my suggestion that Harry’s absence was primarily a fit of pique at his family for downgrading his royal status, rather than down to security fears over the UK’s refusal to give him official police protection.
Duh!
SENIOR civil servant Angus Lapsley left at a bus stop classified documents that show the secret locations of British Special Forces soldiers.
Duh. Worse, he was the Ministry of Defence’s £125k-a-year director-general of strategy at the time of the security breach in June and has now been moved to the Foreign Office.
Here’s a “strategy”.
Rather than risk putting any more lives in danger, how about a blanket rule that such top-secret files are never removed from the secure confines of government offices.
Bye bye Little Mix, we’ll see you, er, soon
LITTLE MIX have announced they’re going their separate ways – temporarily.
It’s a break, rather than a break-up, they were keen to emphasise.
Hmmm.
I was one of the last to interview One Direction before they went off on their supposedly brief hiatus.
And that was seven years ago.
Lost community
DISGRUNTLED locals living in the North Yorkshire fishing village of say that 70 per cent of properties are now holiday homes and the sense of community is suffering.
They have a point, but may I humbly suggest that their ire should perhaps be aimed at the locals who sold their homes to outsiders at inflated prices.
Men-bers only
ONCE again, the men-only Garrick Club in London’s Covent Garden is under growing pressure to end its ban on female members.
And once again, the burning question is: What woman would want to hang out with all those old-fashioned crusties?
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Pest control
MICK JAGGER’S model daughter Elizabeth currently has a red and blue striped awning covering her entire LA mansion.
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This, apparently, is a “fumigation tent” to target pests.
Whether they are of the six-legged variety or the paparazzi remains unclear.
A bad mistake
A SUBTITLE error on a regional BBC news programme told viewers the presenter would be back on air tomorrow night at “happy sex” instead of “half past six”.
When we journos would call copytakers to type out our words of, er, wisdom, I remember “a van full of gendarmes” was printed as a “van full of John Barnes”.
But my favourite was when the late, great writer AA Gill dictated that actor Mark Rylance said, “Hamlet is it” and it appeared in the paper as, “Hamlet is s**t”.