Salim Mehajer claims he and wife Aysha are “still together”

THEY’VE not been seen in each other’s company for a year and she has an AVO against him. But Salim Mehajer says he and wife Aysha are “still together”.

THEY haven’t been seen together for more than a year and there’s an AVO in place to prevent them meeting.

But that’s all news to controversial former deputy mayor Salim Mehajer who has said that, as far as he’s concerned, he’s still happily married to wife Aysha Learmonth.

“She wants to get out of the media and she acts like she is not with me but she is with me,” Mr Mehajer told a Sydney court.

“We are not (separated), we are still together, we are talking,” he was quoted as saying in The Telegraph.

Mr Mehajer made the comments as he pleaded with the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions to vary his bail conditions so he could travel overseas ahead of a court appearance next week. The application was denied.

Salim Mehajer’s application to leave the country was denied. Picture: AAP Image/David Moir.

If they are still loved up, Ms Learmonth — who no longer refers to herself as a Mehajer — has a funny way of showing it. In August she walked into a Sydney police station and asked that a fresh apprehended violence order (AVO) be put in place to restrict her husband from approaching her.

Later, in court, she said Mr Mehajer had bombarded her with more than 400 emails since they separated.

“These emails make me feel on edge and like I’m being stalked,” Ms Learmonth said in a statement made in July.

The happy couple on their wedding day.

“I’m looking over my shoulder constantly and do not know what he is capable of.”

When asked by the Director of Public Prosecutions on Thursday about the AVO, which was granted on an interim basis until March, Mr Mehajer was nonplussed.

“I am not too familiar with the AVOs. All I know is that we do talk and we are still married,” he said.

Just a week ago, Mr Mehajer posted to Instagram to “never get too attached to someone”.

Indeed, as recently as July, there was talk the pair had agreed to a divorce after concluding there was no chance of reconciling their differences.

It was all so different at the Mehajers’ ostentatious wedding in August 2015 which featured fast cars and helicopters and closed down an entire street in western Sydney.

The nuptials that threw the spotlight on Mr Mehajer and Auburn Council which was subsequently dissolved as part of the NSW Government’s local government reforms.

Salim and Aysha’s happy snaps were not to last. Picture: Instagram.

In March, NSW Local Government Minister Gabrielle Upton directly referred to the ceremony and said it was, “the wedding that killed the council”.

The Mehajer’s romance didn’t last long with Ms Learmonth moving out of the marital home last April.

She was said have moved back to Wollongong to be closer to her family.

In March 2016, Mr Mehajer threw a grand party for his wife’s 30th birthday, rumoured to cost up to $50,000, but she appeared to be a no show.

Following the apparent estrangement, Mr Mehajer continued to post multiple pictures of the pair on Instagram.

But the cracks showed with Mr Mehajer reportedly turning up Ms Learmonth’s Wollongong residence and allegedly “yelling and screaming at the door”.

At one point, after an AVO was lodged against him on behalf of Ms Learmonth, he told news.com.au, “only death will do us apart.”

Aysha Learmonth is seen giving a treatment to Keira Maguire in her Instagram story.

Ms Learmonth has become a prolific Instagrammer herself — but with no shots of her husband.

She recently popped up on Bachelor ‘villain’ Keira Maguire’s Instagram page. Maguire posted videos to her Instagram account showing her lying on her stomach with Ms Learmonth in the background, explaining the “Brazilian butt lift” she was administering with a suction tool.