Sean Rigg's family were forced to repeatedly relive his death over the course of more than a decade as they fought for accountability over his treatment in custody.

His sister Marcia Rigg-Samuel has campaigned tirelessly since he suffered a fatal heart attack at Brixton police station in 2008.

The family and their legal team have had to work relentlessly - lodging a complaint about the initial police watchdog investigation two months after his death, pushing for a second post mortem, spending months trawling through CCTV themselves, and securing a review of the initial decision not to bring any criminal charges in the case.

Ms Rigg-Samuel told the Press Association: "I shouldn't be here almost 11 years after Sean's death trying to get the truth out.

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"It's been traumatic, sleepless nights, anger. Reliving the death at various stages in these 10 and a half years that no family should have to go through.

"We should be able to rely on the judicial system to do the right thing in a reasonable period of time.

"Ten and a half years is totally unacceptable in itself."

The former legal secretary, who wore a T-shirt featuring her brother's picture every day of the hearing, said she had to treat his death like "another case".

"Even though it was my brother's death I looked at it as another case, and that's how I've been able to deal with it."

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In the run up to the 2012 inquest into Sean's death, his family were given a compilation of CCTV from the police station by the then-IPCC - with 29 seconds missing.

Ms Rigg-Samuel and her brother Wayne secured the raw footage and then spent months trawling through it and making transcripts, that were later used at the inquest.

Their work proved that Sergeant Paul White had not made a welfare check on Mr Rigg while he was in the police van as he and colleague Police Constable Mark Harratt had claimed.

"A family shouldn't have to do that because that was traumatic, watching Sean die over and over and over and over again," she said.

"They (the IPCC) were the investigators, why couldn't they do that?"

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She said she has been motivated by her love for her brother to continue fighting.

"To know him was to love him, it's as simple as that. And that's why I do it now, because of my love for my brother, I do what I do. Not just for Sean but for others.

"Because he's going to be no less dead after all these investigations, he's still dead.

"Why is he dead? He shouldn't be. The officers all claim that they did everything to help him, but why is he dead? That's the question. If they did that, he shouldn't be dead."

She added: "I worked in human rights law for 26 years and I knew that I had rights and so therefore I was never going to give up.

"The trick is to never give up.

"But of course that had a detrimental effect on my wellbeing and it was traumatic and I really had to give up my life, my personal life, for this case."

The family's lawyer Daniel Machover, from Hickman and Rose, said the family has had to fight "every step of the way".