Sydney honour killing trial


A student accused of an honour killing has told a Sydney jury he wouldn’t have cared if his mother had 10 affairs.

Andrew Iskandar said that before the death of Mohd Shah Saemin, he was unaware his mother was having an affair with the man.

“If my mother had one or 10 affairs it doesn’t bother me … not in the slightest,” he said in the NSW Supreme Court today.

The 21-year-old has pleaded not guilty to murdering Mr Saemin, 43, outside his flat in Leichhardt, in Sydney’s inner west, about midnight on February 21, 2010.

He has also denied soliciting an inmate to murder a crown witness to whom he allegedly confessed.

His mother, Nita Iskandar, 47, has pleaded not guilty to being an accessory after the fact by helping her son leave the country following Mr Saemin’s death.

The crown alleges Iskandar and his father planned the “honour killing” of Mr Saemin, a driver at the Malaysian consulate, because he was having an affair with Nita Iskandar, his colleague.

The affair had allegedly become a talking point among Sydney’s Indonesian community.

On Friday, Iskandar told the jury he hit Mr Saemin with a hammer after he attacked him and his father.

Iskandar said he threw the hammer down before his father chased Mr Saemin and stabbed and repeatedly hit him with another hammer.

On Monday, crown prosecutor Kara Shead told the court that Iskandar said he considered his mother to be a good mother.

“Did you think a good mother has an affair?” she asked.

“My mother and father were always talking of divorce. From 2008 my dad was sleeping in my room,” Iskander said.

He said he told his mother he did not mind if they divorced.

He told the jury he disliked his father and it did not matter if his mother had an affair.

Iskander said his father had told him that people in the Indonesian community were “whispering” about him and his wife, and he would often call his son to see if his mother had arrived home from work.

Iskandar said he told his mother about his father’s calls, and she said he was being “paranoid” and she had been going out for a pizza with work colleagues.

His father regularly called his mother “a slut or a whore”, but Iskandar said he never told him he thought his wife was actually having an affair.

The trial is continuing before Justice David Davies.

– AAP

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