Rage as abuse history cuts husband butcher’s jail time
Tom Wark |
An outraged nephew has launched a tirade over the perceived soft sentence his aunt received for killing and dismembering her husband.
Nirmeen Noufl was jailed for at least three years on Friday after pleading guilty in August to killing her husband Mamdouh in excessive self-defence while she was being choked and assaulted.
With time served, the 55-year-old will be eligible for parole in October 2027.
She was originally charged with murder before prosecutors accepted an admission to the lesser charge.
Crown prosecutor Mark Hay told the court the disposal of Mr Noufl’s body – supposedly into rubbish bins – meant a murder charge could not be pursued and his wife’s version of events had to be accepted.
After the sentence was handed down, Mr Noufl’s nephew vented his fury and frustration and warned his aunt was “gonna be so dangerous to the community”.
“(She) should have got f***ing 25 years (to) life in jail,” Khaled Noufal told reporters outside the NSW Supreme Court
“If it was an accident, if she was not meant to kill him, why did you f***ing dismember his body?”
An extremely traumatic childhood followed by severe domestic violence mitigated the seriousness of the killing, but the dismemberment was important to the case, the judge said.
“Disposal of the body in this case was as thorough as it was brutal,” Justice Peter Hamill said on Friday.
“The conduct after the killing is remarkable and chilling … and is also relevant to issues such as remorse.”
A key factor in the length of her stint behind bars was the sustained history of abuse she suffered at her husband’s hand, culminating in the attack she said she was sustaining when she stabbed him.
“This was a gravely abusive relationship featuring violence, psychological manipulation and coercive control,” Justice Hamill said.
Noufl wiped away tears in court as Justice Hamill outlined the circumstances of extreme violence and abuse in her childhood and marriage.
The judge had correctly predicted Mr Noufl’s family would be disappointed with the sentence he imposed – six years and nine months, with a minimum of three years.
In a victim impact statement he tendered to the court, Mr Noufal said his uncle was a “shining light”.
“He possessed a rare, pure kindness that touched everyone who crossed his path,” Mr Noufal’s statement said.
The court however, leant on facts agreed by prosecutors and the killer that the victim held conservative Islamic views and was controlling of his wife and daughters.
Just days before his death in their Greenacre home, he told his wife he met a woman in Egypt months earlier whom he planned to marry.
But he denied Noufl’s request for a divorce.
When he returned home later that day, they got into an argument and he assaulted her, choking her as he pinned her to the ground, Noufl later told psychiatrists.
“All my life … he just treated me like shit, spat at me,” the 55-year-old told a confidante after the killing.
“I had enough.”
Noufl dismembered her husband’s body using a saw and disposed of it in multiple garbage bags across southwest Sydney.
His body was never found and her claim, after her October 2024 arrest, that she stabbed him only once in the chest could not be tested.
One of Noufl’s daughters told the court she would uproot her life abroad to help her mother when she is released.
1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732)
Lifeline 13 11 14
Men’s Referral Service 1300 766 491
AAP