Woman who knifed cheating husband jailed

Nooshin Nedjah, 30, was jailed for 11 years yesterday over the attack at their flat in Leeds after she became convinced he had married someone else.

Medi Sangachin, 36, suffered massive blood loss after the kitchen knife entered his heart and only survived the attack thanks to the skill of one of the country’s leading surgeons.

Nedjah was found not guilty of attempted murder after a trial at Leeds Crown Court but was convicted of wounding with intent.

The jury heard the couple are both originally from Iran and married in June last year after starting a relationship in 2010 when they met on a bus.

They set up home at a first floor flat in Holtdale Gardens, Holt Park, where neighbours got the impression they were not a happy couple.

One neighbour gave evidence at the trial in which she described Nedjah endlessly screaming and shouting at Mr Sangachin.

In December last year Mr Sangachin visited his family in Iran but the couple continued to row over the phone. He told his wife he had been unfaithful to her and tension between them continued as Nedjah believed he had remarried during his trip to the middle east.

The court heard Nedjah persuaded her husband to come to bed on the afternoon of February 17 and they had sex. Afterwards Nedjah told him she had a “surprise” and told her husband to cover his eyes.

Jonathan Sharp, prosecuting, said: “At that point she produced a sharp knife, which she had fetched from the kitchen, and plunged it with force into his chest, penetrating his heart and his left lung and only narrowly missing the main coronary artery.

Nedjah, who came to the UK to study English, initially failed to help her husband as blood pumped from the wound but eventually dialled 999. A recording of the emergency services call was played to the court.

The jury heard Mr Sangachin was in a critical condition and may have died without the skill of surgeon Dr Patrick McGoldrick.

Nedjah initially tried to claim her husband had inflicted the injury upon himself in a bid to get her deported back to Iran. She later changed her account and said he had produced the knife and was stabbed accidentally as the pair struggled.

Matthew Bean, for Nedjah, said his client had been receiving treatment for mental health problems. The barrister said she would struggle to serve a prison sentence in a foreign country owing to the language barrier and her being away from her family.

The Recorder of Leeds, judge Peter Collier OC, told Nedlah he was satisfied her husband had been unfaithful.

He said: “There has been a degree of planning in what you did.

“I am satisfied that you lured him to have sex with you in order to get him into the position where you could strike him as you did.”