The case dates back to late June 2012 when the convicted man, a 40-year-old Frenchman originally from Sri Lanka, attacked his wife in a Geneva apartment in what the court termed a “particularly odious” crime, the ATS news agency reported.

The couple’s children, aged seven and nine, were in the apartment at the time.

The criminal court judges concluded that the accused man had decided to “exterminate” his 32-year-old wife with premeditation because he could not accept that she had begun a relationship with another man six months earlier, ATS said.

The wife had also told her husband that she wanted to separate from him and while the pair were still living under same roof they slept in separate rooms.

The judges said the testimony of the children was a determining factor in their decision.

According to a report from 20 Minutes, the children testified that their father told them afterward that their mother had “left with her lover, she did not love you.”

The convicted man was arrested in Basel after the victim’s body was fished out of the Rhone, three days after the murder.

He has been in custody ever since. 

While the prosecution argued that the accused acted in a cold and calculated way, his lawyer Yaël Hayat described the killing as a "crime of passion", 20 Minutes reported.

Hayat announced that she would be appealing the sentence.