The criminal trial of two former Sydney hospital nurses, charged over a recorded conversation about Israeli patients that went viral in 2025, was due to start this month. Instead, not for the first time, it didn’t.
Ahmad Rashad Nadir and Sarah Abu Lebdeh, both former nurses at Bankstown-Lidcombe Hospital in southwest Sydney, were scheduled to face a District Court of NSW jury the week of Oct. 5. According to AAP, the listing was vacated on the morning of Thursday, Oct. 8, after the court noted that a constitutional issue pertaining to the trial had been raised. The court relisted the matter for a mention on Nov. 19 in Parramatta, and it is not the first time the trial has been pushed back.
What they’re charged with
The case traces back to a February 2025 video call on the webcam-chat platform Chatruletka, in which Nadir and Abu Lebdeh allegedly made menacing comments about Israeli patients to a man who turned out to be an Israeli content creator, Max Veifer. Veifer later told the court he posted the recording publicly because he wanted to “warn our people,” according to ABC News Australia. Both nurses were fired and are barred from practicing nursing anywhere in Australia.
Abu Lebdeh and Nadir have each pleaded not guilty to using a carriage service to menace or harass, a federal offence. Abu Lebdeh also pleaded not guilty to a separate charge of threatening violence to a group; a more serious charge against her, using a carriage service to threaten to kill, was withdrawn by prosecutors in September 2025. Nadir separately pleaded not guilty to a charge of possessing a prohibited drug. Neither has been convicted of anything.
A fight over whether the video could even be used at trial has run alongside the criminal case. The defence argued it was recorded unlawfully under a NSW law that bars recording private conversations without every participant’s consent. Courts went back and forth on the question before ruling, as of late July 2026, that the video is admissible evidence.
Whatever a jury eventually decides about the criminal charges, the professional consequence already happened: both nurses lost their jobs and their ability to practice the moment this recording became public, well before any court weighed in. I don’t take that lightly, on either side of it — patients deserve to trust the person caring for them, and a nursing regulator doesn’t need a criminal conviction to act on what it sees in a recording. But it’s also a reminder that in 2026, a private conversation you think is private can end a career in an afternoon. That cuts both ways, and it’s worth sitting with regardless of how this particular trial comes out.
What happens next
Both nurses were on bail at last report. The matter returns for a mention on Nov. 19 before a new trial date can be set. No new trial date has been set. Nadir and Abu Lebdeh are presumed innocent of the outstanding charges unless and until a court finds otherwise.