“Justice has been served,” the mother of slain lawyer Margaret Mifsud said yesterday evening after her daughter’s former husband was given the toughest sentence for murder in recent history.

“My daughter can never be brought back but I am very satisfied with the judgment. I feel I can finally close a chapter in my life because Margaret has been served justice,” Tessie Mifsud told the Times of Malta.

Nizar El Gadi, 36, was sentenced to life in prison with five counts of solitary confinement. Jurors found him guilty, by a count of 8-1, of the callous murder of the mother of his children in 2012.

This means that he will never emerge from prison and that, five times every year, he will spend 10 days in solitary confinement. There is no parole for homicide.

The sentence supersedes that of David Norbert Schembri in 2007. He got life with three counts of solitary confinement for stabbing his former girlfriend 49 times in front of their seven-year-old daughter.

The court also fined Mr El Gadi €17,000 and put into effect a two-year suspended sentence which he had received for filing a false police report claiming the Libyan secret services were going to bomb the US Embassy in Malta.

Dr Mifsud was strangled in the early morning hours of April 19, 2012, her lifeless body found in her car in Baħar iċ-Ċagħaq.

After Mr Justice Antonio Mizzi read out the verdict, the accused was seen pointing his fingers, in the shape of a gun, at Ms Mifsud and her family. Sources said the accused then turned to lead investigator Inspector Keith Arnaud and told him: “You are next.”

The Attorney General’s Office will be taking legal steps against Mr El Gadi for threatening a police inspector.

Commotion briefly erupted in the courtroom when Ms Mifsud turned towards the accused after the sentence was read out and shouted: “Now you got your wish.”

She was referring to the prosecution’s argument that he had married her daughter, after she fell pregnant, in order to obtain Maltese citizenship and reside in Malta.

The sentence means he will spend a lifetime behind bars here.

Ms Mifsud was hurriedly escorted out of the courtroom as her sisters burst into loud cheers. The jubilant applause continued outside the courtroom.

She later expressed her gratitude to lawyers Emmanuel Mallia, Arthur Azzopardi, Kathleen Grima and Maria Cardona, as well as to Inspector Arnaud and his colleagues, who “worked from their hearts to see that justice was served”. She also thanked her colleagues and superiors at her place of work for their support.

After the jurors had returned the guilty verdict, Mr Justice Mizzi spent around an hour deliberating over the sentence. He heard the counsel of each of the parties.

Philip Galea Farrugia, from the Attorney General’s Office, argued that the jury had spoken very clearly and the verdict was nearly unanimous.

He insisted on a life sentence in light of the sheer cruelty of the crime.

“The court has a duty to make sure justice is seen to be done. It has an obligation towards the convict, to Margaret and to society at large.

“The place of such a person is not within our society.”

Dr Azzopardi, appearing parte civile for the Mifsud family, went a step further and appealed for a life sentence with solitary confinement.

He said the effect on the children was an extremely harrowing one, which they would have to carry with them for life.

The fact that their mother had been killed by their father was a double trauma. They now referred to their grandparents as “Mum” and “Dad”, he pointed out, adding that Mr El Gadi had “dismembered” the family. Dr Azzopardi also referred to the suffering of the victim.

Court-appointed pathologists had explained to the jury that death by asphyxia would have taken place within three to five minutes.

“He did this to a woman who loved him, who bore him children.”

Defence lawyer Martin Testaferrata Moroni Viani said the guilty verdict would be appealed. He said it was “harsh and cruel” of society to ask for the maximum sentence. His client, he added, remained the father of his children.

The children had been manipulated into telling falsehoods through prejudice, fear and misunderstanding.

While the accused was “no angel”, Dr Testaferrata Moroni Viani continued, he was not guilty.

The circumstances surrounding Dr Mifsud’s death indicated the situation was not premeditated but was an accidental death of an intimate nature, he said. The arguments did not convince the court.