Wife of Grenfell hero says final inquiry report ‘is not justice for us… no one is going to jail’

Flora Neda, who escaped from the doomed tower’s top floor while her husband Saber stayed to help, says the victims have been forgotten

It’s been seven years since Flora Neda’s husband jumped to his death, landing at the foot of Grenfell Tower two minutes before she emerged from the burning building, having been carried down 23 floors by their son.
Seven long years in which Flora  is still grieving, still missing her husband, still seeking justice. On Wedensday, the public inquiry into the Grenfell fire will produce its final report into the cause of the blaze that killed 72 people. 
The report will be massive, thousands of pages long and with an executive summary of more than 50 pages, which will attempt to unpick the tangled web of who exactly is to blame for the worst domestic tragedy in a generation.
For Flora, the report won’t bring her comfort. Just a further reminder that after all this time there’s still no one behind bars; still no one convicted of any wrongdoing.
“It’s not justice for us. Nobody is going to jail,” says Flora. She hadn’t asked for a public inquiry and nobody had asked if she wanted one. They couldn’t have done. Theresa May ordered a full public inquiry 24 hours after the fire at a time when Flora was in a coma fighting for her life. 
Many of the other bereaved were still at that time looking for their loved ones and had no idea if they were alive or dead. They believe the public inquiry has simply delayed justice for an additional seven years. It will take another two years for charges – if any – to be brought and maybe another year after that for any trial to take place. That’s a decade on from the 2017 fire.
“I was in a coma for two months. I didn’t see anyone. I didn’t know about an inquiry,” says Flora, “They [ministers] made that decision. And when they explained it to me I asked, what is it for?
“When I understood, I knew the inquiry is not for us. It is not for the people who are the victims… It’s not justice for us. It’s really sad for us. It makes us more angry.”
Flora, 62, who had been a teacher in her native Afghanistan before fleeing the Taliban in the mid 1990s and seeking refuge in the UK, is sitting in her flat in west London, three miles from her former home in flat 205 on the top floor of Grenfell Tower. 
She gazes lovingly at photographs of her husband Saber Neda, 57, a former Afghan police officer, who had stayed behind to help other people trapped on their floor down the tower block’s single staircase. His heroism cost him his life.
Flora and her son Farhad were the only survivors from the top floor, the rest condemned to death by a London Fire Brigade policy that ordered residents to “stay put” rather than evacuate. Flames had reached the top of the high-rise block in about 20 minutes, fanned by flammable and combustible cladding and insulation.
The inquiry, chaired by Sir Martin Moore-Bick, a retired Court of Appeal  judge, will present findings on how the building came to be in a condition which allowed the flames to spread so quickly.
Flora contemplates where the blame lies. She is not critical of Sir Martin, confident he has done a thorough, exhaustive job in sifting through millions of documents and thousands of hours of testimony to get to the truth. 
But it is a process that she believes has benefited the lawyers, not the victims. So far the legal bill alone for the inquiry has topped £100 million, almost ten times the cost of the Grenfell refurbishment.
“Before the inquiry finished they forgot us,” says Flora. She is cautious about naming names, having been told by her lawyers to be wary prior to the report’s publication. But she adds: “The first  in charge is RBKC [Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea] because they decided to change the building, the cladding, everything.” 
Then comes the fire brigade which ordered residents to “stay put”. Then come the companies that manufactured and sold the combustible materials.
Flora desperately misses her husband. Tears form as she remembers him; she gazes at the shrine in the corner of her flat across from where she is sitting. “Every week, I’m going to his grave. And, even when I’m going to his grave I don’t accept his death. I feel he’s alive. I miss him a lot. Because he wasn’t only my husband, he was a really good friend for me.
I can’t forget him. Even when people say, ‘May  he rest in peace’ my body starts shaking and I just feel cold. I can’t accept it. I love him.”
For more than an hour Flora recounts the events of the night. The horror all too clear. CCTV shows the Nedas returning home at 12.52am (they had been at Flora’s sister’s home) just two minutes before fire broke out at 12.54am on June 14 2017, caused by a faulty fridge in a flat on the fourth floor. 
That night they had managed to get a parking space close to the tower block entrance rather than some distance away as usual. At the time the family were pleased to be so close. Had it taken them half an hour to park it would have been obvious by then the block was ablaze and not safe to enter.
Up in their flat Flora had trouble sleeping, struggling with the heat that night, and then a strange smell in the air. At some point not long after there was banging on the door. 
Residents living below them had made their way to the top floor because the staircase going down was blocked as dense black clouds rose through the building. They were also under the false impression a helicopter was going to rescue them from the tower’s roof.
“They were very frightened, screaming and shouting, crying,” recalls Flora. She estimates 35 to 40 people joined them on the top floor, and is convinced to this day far more than the official tally of 72 people were killed in the blaze.
For about an hour the Nedas stayed in their flat along with refugees from the floors below, an Egyptian mother and daughter and two Iranian sisters. By then the flames had reached them and the two bedrooms in which they were trying to shelter.
In desperation they decided to attempt an escape. “I didn’t want to burn. I wanted to jump from the window but my husband said, ‘Don’t be silly’.”
Over the phone the fire brigade had told them to stay in the flat and await rescue. In fact fire crews never got even close to that high up the building.
Saber filled bowls with water and wet towels as the smoke threatened to engulf them. One of the Iranian women was disabled and Saber stayed in the flat to escort her down. Farhad, who had been a taekwondo international representing the UK, picked up his mother – Flora weighed about eight and a half stone – lifted her across his shoulder and began the descent down. 
“I didn’t want to go but Farhad said, ‘Mum, we have to leave. It’s impossible to stay’.”
As they descended, Flora realised her husband and the women he had stayed behind to help were not following. She became hysterical, distraught. She recalls telling her  son: “We have to go back and tell him to come. I was shouting, I was crying and loudly screaming. But he didn’t answer.”
As they continued their descent the smoke began to fill their lungs. “We were coughing, vomiting, I wasn’t able to talk.” She dropped her phone which lit up the staircase briefly. “By the light of my phone I saw people had fallen down and we had stepped on them.”
One of them “was doing his last breathing. We couldn’t help him. He was dying.” Farhad, struggling to breathe, ploughed on with his mother’s weight on his shoulder. They took respite on one of the floors which was miraculously largely smoke-free before continuing down until they reached a fire crew, possibly on the fourth floor, where Flora collapsed. 
She was dragged to safety by her feet. CCTV shows Flora and Fahad leaving the tower two minutes after her husband plunged to his death, preferring to jump than burn. Saber’s final message to his loved ones, left in an Afghan language, read: “Goodbye. We are now leaving this world. Goodbye. I hope I haven’t disappointed you. Goodbye to all.”
To his family Saber is a hero who stayed behind to rescue his neighbours.
Flora was still in hospital when his funeral took place; a huge gathering of the community with Flora driven to the graveside in an ambulance. Six months later she was forced to have a second funeral when police found a bone about two and a half inches long in a jacket he had been wearing when he jumped to his death. The bone had become embedded in the jacket as a result of the impact of his fall. 
Police, Flora says, realised the bone was there when they heard it “clanging” inside a washing machine, before handing it back to her.
Seven years on, Flora hasn’t really recovered. In front of her on the table in her living room I counted 10 pills she takes for various ailments. There’s still a lot of pain. The public inquiry isn’t going to take that pain away.