Nirmeen Noufl is awaiting sentence for manslaughter after pleading guilty in August to killing her husband Mamdouh in circumstances of excessive self-defence while being assaulted.
The 55-year-old told two psychiatrists she only stabbed her husband once, but evidence could not be tested because Mr Noufl's body was not found after his May 2023 death, agreed facts of the case state.
Noufl dismembered her husband's body using a saw and disposed of it in multiple garbage bags across southwest Sydney.
Initially charged with murder, prosecutors opted against pursuing that case on the eve of a trial and accepted a guilty plea to manslaughter.
In a NSW Supreme Court sentence hearing on Monday, the couple's daughter gave evidence about her interactions with her mother in prison while awaiting sentence.
"In the last year, she's become a lot more ... fragile and broken," the daughter, who cannot be named for legal reasons, said in court.
"She's very sorry.
"She can't hold back her tears when she sees me."
Both women were emotional in court during the evidence and used tissues to wipe away tears.
Noufl's repeated offers to plead guilty to manslaughter in the lower courts also showed she had a consistent level of contrition, her barrister said.
Psychological evidence showed the 55-year-old likely developed a survival mechanism, common in abuse survivors, during and after the killing, Bill Neild SC said.
"She was observed to be behaving strangely ... whispering to herself, saying prayers in Arabic but saying them in the wrong order," Mr Neild said.
However, the crown prosecutor cast doubt over whether Noufl was sorry for killing her husband, or just for the impact it had on the rest of her family.
"It's very clear she demonstrated not the slightest bit of remorse until only recently," Mark Hay said.
Agreed facts state after the killing Noufl told a confidante why she attacked her husband.
"All my life ... he just treated me like shit, spat at me," she told the confidante.
"I had enough."
Mr Noufl held conservative Islamic views and was controlling of his wife, who has been receiving treatment for depression and post-traumatic stress disorder for years, according to the court documents.
Just days before his death in their Greenacre home, he told his wife he met a woman in Egypt years 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.
She felt like her life was in danger when she grabbed a nearby tool and fatally stabbed Mr Noufl once in the chest, she said.
Four members of Mr Noufl's family, including his niece and nephew, tendered victim impact statements speaking of their grief since the killing.
"(The statements) make the very strong point that they don't have a grave at which to visit the deceased," Justice Peter Hamill said.
"For contrition and remorse to be taken into account ... one really needs some evidence of a positive attempt to compensate."
At the end of the hearing, Justice Hamill warned Mr Noufl's family, watching the hearing remotely, that they would likely not agree with the sentence he imposes for his killer.
"I hope all of you understand ... there will seem to be a gap between the loss you have suffered forever and the sentence I impose," the judge said.
Noufl will be sentenced on Friday.
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