A British mother mouthed ‘I love you’ as her husband battered her to death with a wheel brace before burying her body in their back garden, a court heard.
Ahmed Dawood Seedat, 37, killed Fahima Yusuf – originally from Bolton – while their children slept at their home in Perth, Western Australia in August.
Accountant Seedat, 32, murdered his wife because he wanted a relationship with her sister.
Today, a judge in Australia sentenced him to 23 year behind bars and called the killing brutal, callous and cowardly.
Ahmed Dawood Seedat (left) made ‘disturbing’ online searches including how to bury a person alive before he murdered his wife Fahima Yusuf (right)
Ms Yusuf’s body was found in a shallow grave in their backyard four days after her murder
Justice Bruno Fiannaca said Seedat planned the murder of Ms Yusuf for weeks and had egotistical motives.
Justice Fiannaca said Seedat had earlier searched online for chilling terms such as ‘cremating a body’, ‘best place to knock someone out’ and burying someone alive.
He said Seedat struck his wife of eight years with a wheel brace as she slept.
Seedat’s lawyer Bernard Standish previously told the court his client had lost attraction for his wife and that he could no longer meet her ‘sexual demands’.
Seedat told police officers on the night of the murder that he killed her because she tried to come on to him, the court heard.
He had claimed his wife became ‘sexually aggressive’, prompting him to attack, but Justice Fiannaca said that was implausible, reports the Canberra Times.
Ms Yusuf woke up after the first blow but was vulnerable and easily overpowered by him as he continued his attack, Justice Fiannaca said.
Seedat then choked or suffocated Ms Yusuf and buried her in a hole that had been made by a contractor who was told it was to install a pool for his children, aged two and five.
Seedat claimed his wife’s final words were her telling him: ‘I love you.’
But Justice Fiannaca said that only demonstrated her horror and desperation to stop him from killing her, and the betrayal she felt.
Ms Yusuf’s cause of death remains undetermined but Justice Fiannaca said she suffered lacerations to her head and body, and had sand in her mouth but not in her airways.
After Ms Yusuf’s death, Seedat lied to explain her absence, telling friends and neighbours she had gone to the UK for eye surgery and telling her sister she had left him.
Ms Yusuf (pictured left) and Seedat (pictured right) lived in the Perth suburb of Carlisle with their two children aged two and five
The hole was dug by a contractor, who was told it was to install a pool for the children, the court heard (pictured: Mr Seedat and Ms Yusuf’s backyard which was put up for sale)
Seedat, originally from Durban, South Africa, also asked a friend to call Ms Yusuf’s interstate father and impersonate a police officer.
Justice Fiannaca said it was part of Seedat’s narcissistic traits that he thought people would believe his lies and he would get away with the crime.
‘It may have been technically clumsy but it was calculated behaviour,’ he said.
Ms Yusuf was reported missing four days after her death and police found her body the following day.
Seedat had intended to try to pursue a relationship with his sister-in-law, who he described as his best friend, but she viewed him as a brother.
‘You envisaged a future with your sister-in-law … you had become emotionally dependent on her,’ Justice Fiannaca said.
Seedat had also searched online: ‘Can you marry your brother-in-law if your sister is dead muslim?’
Justice Fiannaca said Seedat had deprived his children of both their parents, but accepted he was remorseful.
Seedat is separately facing fraud charges, with allegations he stole $5.7 million.
Piles of soil were dug up in the backyard of the home as part of the extensive police investigation