An Egyptian Muslim immigrant who killed her husband and dumped his body parts across Sydney has escaped a murder conviction after claiming she acted in self-defence and suffered years of domestic violence abuse.
Nirmeen Noufl, 56, was originally charged with murdering husband Mamdouh Noufl, 62, inside their home in Greenacre and dismembering his body, but made a deal with prosecutors ahead of a NSW Supreme Court trial that was set to take place this week and last for an estimated 40 days.
Mamdouh was reported missing in July 2023, and his wife was arrested in October 2024 and charged with murder, with police alleging she cut up his corpse with knives and power tools and disposed of the body parts in bins across the city’s south-west.
Police alleged at the time that Noufl, who ran NDIS and child-minding businesses, was motivated by financial gain as she had accumulated unexplained wealth and bought investment properties in the Middle East after Mamdouh’s disappearance.
But in at a court hearing on Wednesday, Justice Peter Hamill was told the matter had been “resolved” subject to agreement, and Noufl, who appeared by videolink wearing a hijab, pleaded not guilty to murder and guilty to manslaughter, The Sydney Morning Herald reported.
Prosecutors accepted Noufl’s plea of guilty to manslaughter on the basis they could not disprove a partial argument of self-defence.
According to a statement of agreed facts, Noufl told psychiatrists she was trying to get away from Mamdouh and felt her life was in danger when she fatally stabbed him in the chest with a tool that was being used to renovate their home.
The documents stated Noufl had suffered years of domestic violence abuse, that she had asked for a divorce because her husband was planning to marry another woman in Egypt, and that he was “controlling of his wife and daughters”.
“He held conservative Islamic views with respect to the role of women in the home and community and was strict in the application of these views to his female relatives,” the fact sheet stated.
The agreed facts also stated a friend of Noufl’s referred to as Witness A found her with a bleeding lip and swollen jaw at 2.50am on the night of the killing, and saw a tarpaulin on the flood covered in blood, with pieces of a circular saw underneath.
Witness A later helped Noufl clean and bleach the scene, and cover up the killing by lying to Mamdouh’s family during a trip to Egypt two weeks later, saying he was sick.
Later, during a conversation between Noufl, a relative and Witness A, she confessed to the killing and said: “We had a fight and he was laughing at me.”
“All my life I have dedicated to the kids and him, and he just treated me like shit. Spat at me,” she said, according to the court documents.
“I had enough. I have been trying to fight for us to be normal, to ignore the voices in my head.”
Noufl will face court again on September 14 for a sentencing hearing.
Header image: Left, Nirmeen Noufl. Right, Mamdouh Noufl.
