Mokhtar Hosseiniamraei and Leila Alavi. Credit:Facebook "We have commitment, moral commitment towards one another. In this country this means nothing." A video of the police interview with Hosseiniamraei was tendered to the NSW Supreme Court during his sentencing hearing on Thursday. He pleaded guilty to murder earlier this year. Hosseiniamraei was a violent husband who had threatened to kill his 26-year-old wife three months before he murdered her in her blue Holden Astra, which was parked beneath the hairdressing salon where she worked at Auburn in January 2015. "You are a slut, I'm going to kill you and I'm going to fix up your sister and friends who have been teaching you this."

Victim: Leila Alavi. After this chilling phone call, Ms Alavi took an apprehended violence order out against Hosseiniamraei and she moved out of their marital home in Toongabbie. Ms Alavi's sister, Mitra Alavi, has previously told Fairfax Media that her little sister moved into her Waterloo unit after she was turned away from up to a dozen women's refuges. Mokhtar Hosseiniamraei murdered his estranged wife with a pair of scissors in January 2015. "Eight months before she died she come to my place and told me, 'I can't live with Mokhtar because he is punching me and it is scary'," Ms Alavi said.

"Leila go to a woman's place with me but every day they say we don't have a room." Mitra Alavi, sister of murdered hairdresser Leila Alavi, leaves the NSW Supreme Court on Thursday. Credit:Daniel Munoz The day before the murder, Ms Alavi was working as a hairdresser at Benjamin Hair Studio in Auburn when she received a phone call from her estranged husband. She was visibly upset and told one of her colleagues, "He said he is going to kill me and all of us." Ms Alavi then resolved to change her phone number, but it was not enough to stop Hosseiniamraei from hunting her down.

The following day she went to work and was in the middle of cutting someone's hair when she was told Hosseiniamraei was waiting for her outside the business. She told her colleagues she would go and speak to him and she was last seen alive walking down a ramp that leads to an underground car park. Ms Alavi was later stabbed 22 times in the head and neck, 27 times in the legs and torso and seven times in the shoulder and arms. In a victim impact statement tendered to the court, Mitra Alavi spoke about how she and her sister left Iran for a better life away from violence. "Leila was everything to me, she was the only family I had for many years and the only family I had in Australia," Ms Alavi said.

"I saw that she was abused both physically and psychologically by him. I believe this man was cruel and dangerous. "After Leila was murdered, there was no more colour in my life; my life and my world turned black." Her other sister, Marjan Lofti, expressed distress that her sister did not get the help she needed. "I don't want other women to suffer the same tragedy. "I keep thinking: Why didn't someone help her? Why didn't she receive the protection she needed?"

Hosseiniamraei will be sentenced next Thursday. In his submissions, Crown prosecutor Craig Everson described the murder as "ferocious". "It's also very clear that the offender was very angry with the deceased. This was an anger that simmered. It was to do essentially with her not meeting his expectations as to what a wife should do," Mr Everson said. Defence barrister Craig Smith, SC, told the court that his client had fled from Iran after being persecuted because of his religion. He said his client had a problem with drugs, was deeply affected by the marriage breakdown and was unlikely to reoffend.



National Sexual Assault, Domestic Family Violence Counselling Service: 1800 737 732.

Men's Referral Service: 1300 766 491.

