The mother of a young British teacher sexually assaulted and murdered in the Gulf state of Qatar last night welcomed the death penalty handed to her killer.
Alison Patterson, 49, said ‘justice had been served’ after Badr Hashim Khamis Abdallah al-Jabr was found guilty of murdering her daughter Lauren, 24, yesterday.
A court in Qatar’s capital Doha heard how Lauren, from West Malling, Kent, vanished after a night out in the city last October.
Her smouldering remains were found in a remote desert spot outside Doha just days after she was last seen leaving a nightclub with two local men.
The court heard that Lauren had been sexually assaulted and stabbed before her body was set on fire.
A knife was found in her ribcage.
Yesterday Badr Hashim Khamis Abdallah al-Jabr was found guilty of murder despite insisting that Lauren had died accidentally.
He was told he faced death by hanging or shooting though the death sentence has not been carried out in Qatar for more than 10 years.
Another man, Mohamed Abdallah Hassan Abdul Aziz, was also sentenced to three years in prison for helping dispose of Lauren’s body by burning it, as well as damaging and getting rid of other evidence.
Both men were arrested in October last year, shortly after she had gone missing.
She had only just returned to Doha after attending her grandmother’s funeral in England.
During the trial Lauren’s friend Lea Monet, 22, testified how she and the teacher, and the two defendants, had left a nightclub at the city’s La Cigale hotel together in the early hours after a night out.
She said the men dropped her home and promised they would next drop off Lauren to her apartment in the city.
The prosecutor had called Lauren’s death “heinous, foreign and shocking to a society as conservative as Qatar’s”.
He had told the court that Badr Hashim Khamis Abdallah al-Jabr took Lauren to a house he used for sexual trysts with women, “conquered her body”, and killed her by stabbing her twice.
The defence had argued Lauren’s death had been an accident, and said confessions obtained from the two men on trial were coerced.
The two convicted men did not appear to show any emotion when the verdict and their sentences were announced in court.
Lauren’s grief-stricken mum Alison Patterson was in court to hear the verdict and the sentencing.
She dropped her head into her hands and let out a brief sob.
She was supported by more than a dozen friends and family in the courtroom.
After the case Mrs Patterson, 49, released a statement in Doha.
It read: “Lauren was not only my eldest daughter but she was my closest friend and confidant.
"After her father died suddenly, she took on the role of helping and guiding her siblings and me, which shows how genuine Lauren was, always putting others before herself.
“This has been proven by the hundreds of tributes I have received from around the world. Nothing will ever bring my daughter back.
“As a family we will never be able to replace the times we were looking forward to; Lauren getting married, having children, all of those things and more have been taken away from us by these two individuals.”
She said “justice had been served” in the case of al-Jabar who was convicted of murder and given the death penalty.
But she added she was “deeply upset” with the three-year jail sentence given to Aziz for helping to dispose of Lauren’s body and tampering with evidence.
Mrs Patterson said: “At no time did he choose to help my daughter or report the murder. In fact he did the contrary; he helped (Al-Jabar) dispose of Lauren’s body in the most callous and barbaric way.”
She added: “We will never forget Lauren, nor the horrific way she was murdered.
“Because of the truly heinous and brutal way in which (Al-Jabar) and (Aziz) tried to dispose of Lauren’s body, we were not able to say a final goodbye.
“This will be etched in my memory till the day I die. It is something none of us will forget.
“Nothing will ever make the pain and grief we have all suffered go away.”
She thanked the Qatar government, police force and others involved in the investigation who did “everything possible to apprehend and try Lauren’s killers.”
Meanwhile, the lawyer for the Patterson family, Sami Abu Sheikha, said the court’s verdict was only “partially satisfactory” and he will appeal to ask for a harsher sentence for Aziz.
He confirmed he will also refer the family’s request for 20 million Qatari Riyal (aprox £3.6 million pounds) compensation to be heard in Qatar’s civil courts.
It is not yet known if the convicted men plan to appeal their sentences.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news
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