The nephew of Mamdouh Noufl has condemned what he considers a lenient prison sentence handed to his aunt, Nirmeen Noufl, after she admitted killing and dismembering her husband.
Noufl was sentenced on Friday to a minimum of three years in jail. The 55-year-old pleaded guilty in August to killing Mamdouh Noufl in excessive self-defence during an incident in which she said she was being assaulted and choked.
Taking account of time already served, she will become eligible for parole in October 2027.
She initially faced a murder charge, but prosecutors later accepted her plea to the lesser offence.
Crown prosecutor Mark Hay told the court that the alleged disposal of Mr Noufl’s remains in rubbish bins meant prosecutors could not proceed with a murder case. As a result, he said, they were required to accept his wife’s account of what happened.
Outside the NSW Supreme Court after the sentencing, Mr Noufl’s nephew expressed anger and disbelief, claiming his aunt would 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?”
Nirmeen Noufl cried as Justice Hamill detailed the extreme violence and abuse she had endured during her life.
Justice Hamill warned that no sentence could fully address the loss suffered by Mamdouh Noufl’s family.
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.
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In a victim impact statement he tendered to the court, Mr Noufal said his uncle was a ‘shining light’.
The Noufl home was torn up in the search for evidence of Mamdouh’s death and dismemberment
‘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.
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