Mehajer,36,is on trial in Sydney’s Downing Centre District Court after pleading not guilty to intentionally suffocating a person with recklessness,intimidation,assault occasioning actual bodily harm and four counts of common assault.
A file image of Salim Mehajer in November 2020. The jury has been told he is currently in custody.Louise Kennerley
Leaning into a microphone as he stood in the dock on Wednesday,Mehajer asked the jury of eight men and four women to be patient with him as he is self-represented and will be making notes and relying on handwritten documents. The court has heard he is currently in custody.
“I will do my very best to plead my case to you,” Mehajer,wearing a navy suit and blue tie,said. “I ask you to not look down on me,respectfully,being housed where I am housed.”
He said he had been a subject of “notoriety” and jurors may have heard about him in the media.
Mehajer added that “online trolls” were not true or correct,and had never seen the facts or evidence. “I just ask that you make up your own mind,don’t be persuaded by the outside noise,” he said.
Mehajer said his relationship with the complainant – a former girlfriend who cannot be identified – was “quite healthy” and not “fuelled by any drugs or alcohol”.
He said the relationship “had its ups and downs”,but added:“There’s never been any acts of violence.”
He said the jury may hear voicemail messages or texts which are rude,an outburst or “to some degree controlling behaviour”. But,he said,he was “not charged for swearing”.
Mehajer said a key witness would be his ex-wife Aysha Learmonth,who was his partner for 10 years and who he expects to give evidence that there were “no signs whatsoever of any assault” in that relationship.
‘I ask you to not look down on me,respectfully,being housed where I am housed.’
Salim Mehajer
The court heard he will also call the former girlfriend’s sister and biological father as witnesses.
Mehajer said he would not be suggesting the woman was a “horrible person” but would be suggesting she had “taken a dramatic turn” in a “desperate attempt” to have fraud charges dropped.
“You’ll see in evidence the complainant started to calculate an attack on me,” he said.
Mehajer said he had also been facing fraud charges over the same matter,but they were dropped against both of them,for reasons “unknown” to him.
“They were not dropped because of any exchange of statement[she] made against me,” he said. “The motive of the complainant remains unchanged.”
He claimed the accusations were a “pattern of lies” and the “bizarre allegations are just not true”.
“When the complainant began to lie,it caught like a wildfire,” he said. “The lie just grew larger and larger.”
He expects the woman to rely on screenshots of text messages,but he asked the jury to consider whether parts of the conversations could have been deleted and certain texts “formed into a story”.
The complainant’s evidence began via video link on Wednesday and was heard in closed court. She will be cross-examined on behalf of Mehajer by a court-appointed questioner.
In his opening address on Tuesday,Crown prosecutor Ken Gilson said the woman described Mehajer as experiencing “bouts of anger” during their relationship and had.
He said many of the allegations were “word on word”,without witnesses,and the jury would be asked to consider whether the woman was a witness of truth beyond reasonable doubt.
Gilson said the woman’s mother was expected to give evidence of occasions when she would call her daughter and hear Mehajer in the background or the pair “yelling at each other”.
The jury is also expected to hear from a friend of the woman who she called and texted after the fourth alleged episode when she claims she was suffocated by Mehajer and rendered unconscious.
The trial continues.
Support is available from the National Sexual Assault,Domestic and Family Violence Counselling Service at 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732).
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