party in 2010. The jury heard testimony from the man’s daughters that he regularly whopped them.
The jury was also told that Zialloh Abrahimzadeh’s murder of his wife, Zahra, was so pre-meditated that police found a passport and Iranian immigration papers waiting in his car.
Prosecutor Sandi McDonald said the killing was vengeance on a spouse who found the courage to leave her abuser.
“For years, Abrahimzadeh had used his anger, his fists, his feet and his belt to punish and control his wife and, at times, his family,” she said.
“This is the case of a man who lost control of his family and, as a consequence, hunted his wife down to punish her and make her pay the consequences of her actions.”
Abrahimzadeh, 57, pleaded not guilty to one count of murder.
Opening the trial, Prosecutor McDonald said Zahra died at the Adelaide Convention Centre March 21, 2010, as the culmination of years of abuse that began in 1997, when the couple and their children moved to Australia.
“He was controlling, domineering, regularly resorted to verbal abuse and to violence. He said he would rather go to jail than have … one of his family ruin his reputation.”
After a 2009 fight in which Abrahimzadeh tried to use a knife, Zahra and the children took out restraining orders.
On the night of her murder, Zahra and her eldest daughter, Atena, were attending the local Now Ruz celebration, in Adelaide, the capital city of the state of South Australia. With a population of just over 1 million, it sits in the center of the continent’s south coast.
Prosecutor McDonald said the two women were surprised to see Abrahimzadeh among the 300 people in attendance, and alerted security.
“As Zahra was sitting at a table, … Abrahimzadeh ran up behind her and repeatedly stabbed her in the back. He did not even stop as she fell to the floor…. She didn’t have a chance to defend herself.”
McDonald said Zahra died from eight stab wounds.
Police later discovered a roll of newspaper in his jacket, serving as a sheath for the knife, and paperwork, including a completed visa application for Iran, in the car he had used.
The younger daughter, Anita, testified that she was 11 years old the first time she heard her father, threaten to kill her mother.
She was standing next to him, in the pizza shop he co-owned, while he argued with his wife over the phone. “He said, ‘when I see you, I’m going to get a knife and cut you from the throat down’,” Anita told the court. “He was very loud and angry.” That was several months before the killing.
Jurors heard allegations that Abrahimzadeh physically abused both his wife and his eldest daughter, Atena, including whippings with his belt. Giving evidence by video link yesterday, Anita – who is now aged 14 – said she had been treated the same way.
“If I said something wrong, or something he didn’t like, he would slap me in the face.” She said that when she was seven, she was punished for taking cigarettes to school. “I came home from school and my mum was screaming ‘don’t hit her’ and was pulling me back,” she said. “(But) Dad locked the door and started taking his belt off his pants.
“He just started hitting me with it in the leg asking ‘why did you do it?’ and when I said `I don’t know’ he would hit me, every time.” She said Abrahimzadeh struck her with the belt “about five times”.
The older daughter, Atena, told the court she remembers her father’s rage when he vowed to kill her mother a year before the killing.
But after the killing in the convention center, “He was just calm…. There was no shame, no anger,” Atena told the court.
“I was screaming ‘you killed her’ and holding on to his jacket because I wanted to make sure he was caught. But he was not even trying to get away.”
Atena said she, her mother and younger sister were abused all their lives by her father.
“I had heard him say [to her mother], ‘I’m not a man if I don’t hit you, if I don’t kill you’,” she testified. “I’d heard him say, ‘I swear to God I will kill you’ and ‘I swear on the Koran I will kill you’.”
Atena said her father burned her fingers when she bit her nails.
When she talked to boys, he broke a cordless phone antenna across her neck, whipped her with a belt for an hour and smothered her with a pillow.
“He said ‘I would rather kill you and go to jail than have you ruin my reputation’,” she testified.
She said that, in 2009, Abrahimzadeh lost his temper when the entire family accused him of having an affair.
Atena described her father as “very loud and aggressive” that night with “rage like I had never seen before”.
“He said, ‘I’m going to kill you, I’m going to kill you all. I will make sure no one knows how you died. I’m going to burn the house down with all of you in it’.”
She testified the family fled the house and lived secretive lives for months. However, Abrahimzadeh surprised them by attending the Convention Center event and sitting at their table.
“He told me `Everything that’s gone wrong is because of her [the mother]’ and `If I have failed it’s because of her, she’s the reason’,” Atena said.
When Atena and a friend went to dance, Abrahimzadeh attacked his wife.
“I saw my mum on the floor – on her belly – and my dad being pulled away with a knife in his hand,” Atena said.
