WARNING: Graphic content
Child murderer Mohammed Khazma has been sentenced to 44 years in prison, with a non-parole period of 33 years, for the assault and murder of his new girlfriend’s two-year-old daughter.
Khazma was accused of torturing and murdering the toddler in late 2016 at the new home the three has only recently moved into. He was found guilty in March.
The murder and two counts of assault, which led the toddler to go limp, turn “brownish purple”, vomit “black liquid” and stop breathing occurred in a granny flat in western Sydney.
The toddler's mother, 24, testified against her former de facto at Khazma’s trial.
At the time of the murder, Khazma said “you know babe, I have a feeling someone’s going to die today”.
At the NSW Supreme Court on Friday, Judge Elizabeth Fullerton said she was satisfied Khazma was responsible for most of the child’s 114 injuries, “deriving some perverse pleasure from the pain the child will inevitably have suffered” when he burnt her repeatedly.
Khazma’s sentence was backdated to December 2016 meaning he’ll be eligible for release in December 2049.
Khazma had claimed he “never laid a finger” on the girl insisting her mother was to blame
The mother of the child has already served prison time for her daughter’s manslaughter on the basis she failed to remove the girl from Khazma’s abuse, failed to protect her and failed to get medical help.
The little girl died on December 19, 2016, after about a week in which she had been allegedly burnt on her genitalia with “smiley” burns inflicted by a cigarette lighter, punched, thrown across the room and against a wall and bitten over her body.
On that day, the mother told the court she had woken up in the couple’s Guildford West lounge room and heard Khazma slap the back of her daughter’s neck and the child fall to the floor.
She said Khazma then said, “no (the child’s name), not again, not again”.
The child was rendered unconscious, the woman said, as she had been three times previously in the same week.
On each of those alleged occasions, the child had always woken up, but on the last had been “drowsy” and “staring into space … brain damaged”.
The woman said when her daughter lost consciousness for the final time, Khazma started biting the child’s fingers, toes and tongue in an effort to wake her up, and refused suggestions to take her to hospital.
“He said, ‘no, we’ll fix her’,” the child’s mother told the court.
“He barricaded the door, he had the couch against it.
“He took my phones off me. I asked ‘why did you hit her?’.
“He said, ‘it’s just a tap, I barely touched her’.
“I said, ‘you’re going to end up killing her one day’.”
It was then Khazma allegedly replied he had a “feeling someone’s going to die today”.
The woman said her daughter’s breathing had slowed and become shallow, and Khazma bit the child’s tongue and held his palm over the child’s mouth and squeezed her nose between his fingers.
“She went a bit stiff,” the mother said giving evidence via video link from a room outside the court chamber.
“He grabbed her shoulders and started to shake her. Her feet weren’t touching the ground.
“He shook her back and forward fast. Her head was hitting almost at the back of her head.”
The child’s head went “as far back as it could go” and when it swung forward the little girl’s chin was “touching her chest”.
After several seconds of shaking, the child went limp.
The alleged abuse began after the 24-year-old woman and Khazma moved into together after knowing each other for just weeks, and planning to marry.
The woman told the court Khazma had threatened to kill her and her family and had become angry at the child after she broke a mug at his parents’ house and refused to eat a meal.
“I wasn’t allowed to go near her,” she said. “Mohammed (said), ‘She sleeps when I say she sleeps. She wakes up when I say she wakes up.’”
“He said, ‘She is a naughty girl.’ He wouldn’t let me comfort her,” the woman told the court.
“He slapped her in the face. She started screaming.
“He slapped her again in the face and bit the soles of her feet.”
The woman said this was after her daughter’s legs had turned purple when Mr Khazma forced her to stand in the corner for breaking the mug.
She told the court Mr Khazma planned to raise her daughter “into being a pit bull … as in a tough child”.
Text messages read out in the court before Justice Elizabeth Fullerton detailed how the woman and Mr Khazma had planned an Islamic wedding after knowing each other for a short time.
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