A Qatari man has been sentenced to death for the murder of West Malling teacher Lauren Patterson.

The 24-year-old, whose family home is in Leybourne Chase, was found dead hours after a night out in Doha last year.

She had been teaching at a primary school in the Gulf State.

Another man was sentenced to three years in prison for helping the first to burn her body, as well as damaging and erasing evidence.

The sentences were handed down at a Qatari court today.

Both men were arrested after the teacher’s smouldering remains were found in a remote part of Doha in October last year, shortly after she had gone missing.

A knife was reportedly found lodged inside her rib cage.

The prosecutor had called Lauren Patterson’s death “heinous, foreign and shocking to a society as conservative as Qatar’s.”

Earlier in the trial a friend testified how she last saw Lauren in a car with the two men, who they were “casually acquainted with”, who had offered to drop the pair home after the four left a nightclub at La Cigale hotel together.

Lauren, whose family home is in Leybourne Chase, had just returned from attending her grandmother’s funeral in England.

She was not drunk and “aware of her surroundings”, the Doha court heard.

The prosecutor said she had been sexually assaulted and stabbed twice.

Lauren’s mother Alison Patterson, attended the trial, along with other family members.

It’s not yet known if the convicted men plan to appeal their sentences.

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