A former Conservative MP has asked to be removed from an award-winning academic’s research presented in a TEDx Talk that connects her to a slave-owning ancestor, the BBC can reveal.
Malik Al Nasir named Antoinette Sandbach as a descendant of Samuel Sandbach in a video published in 2021.
The Liverpool merchant had a stake in plantations in the West Indies.
Ms Sandbach argues there is no public interest in identifying her as his descendant.
She says she supports Mr Al Nasir’s research but accuses him of singling her out, when there are many other living relatives.
Mr Al Nasir, a poet and an author, has been researching his family’s link to the transatlantic slave trade for decades.
The BBC first documented his roots quest in 2020, when he discovered his links not only to Sandbach Tinne’s enslaved Africans but also the slave owners.
In 2021, Mr Al Nasir presented a TEDx Talk in which he explained how he discovered his family tree, which can be traced back to the sugar plantations in Demerara, in what was then British Guiana and is now Guyana.
Credit: bbc.com
