Daily Mail
February 9, 2014
A British school teacher found dead in Qatar had been sexually assaulted and stabbed before her burnt remains were left smouldering in a remote desert location, a court heard.
The prosecutor in a court in Doha called for one of two men on trial to be given the death penalty for allegedly murdering 24-year-old Lauren Patterson – calling it ‘heinous and shocking’ to the country’s ‘conservative society’.
Miss Patterson’s mother Alison Patterson from West Malling, Kent, and other family members, were in court to hear how a post mortem on her remains led to the discovery of a knife lodged inside her rib cage.
Two Qatari men, who have not been named, were arrested after being identified by Miss Patterson’s friend as being the last people to see her alive, the court heard.
At an earlier hearing last month the friend testified how she and Miss Patterson and the two men, who they were ‘casually acquainted with’, left a nightclub at La Cigale Hotel in Doha around 3.30am on October 12 last year.
She said Miss Patterson, who had just returned from attending her grandmother’s funeral in England, was not drunk and was ‘aware of her surroundings’.
She said the men dropped her home with the promise they would also drop off her friend shortly afterwards at her house.
The friend told the court when she tried to call Miss Patterson the following morning her phone was off.
She said when she asked the first defendant about this, he said he could have dropped off Miss Patterson at the wrong building.
The friend said the next day she noticed he had a cut on his lower lip and it was swollen, which were not there when she last saw him.
At Thursday’s hearing the prosecutor said one of the defendants took Miss Patterson to a home he used for sexual trysts with women, ‘conquered her body’, and killed her by stabbing her twice.
He said with the help of the second defendant, he put Miss Patterson’s body in the boot of his car and drove her out of the city of Doha to Al-Kharrara, where they burned her remains.
The court was told a knife was found inside the 24-year-old’s rib cage.
At a previous hearing on January 27 a forensic doctor testified he went to the crime scene on a farm in Al-Kharrara, near Wakrah.
He said he found a pit containing the remains of a smouldering human body.
He said a knife was stuck in ‘what appeared to be’ the rib cage of the body.
Due to the extensive damage to the body from the fire, the doctor said he could not ascertain whether the cause of death was by stabbing, whether there was alcohol in the body, or if any sexual contact had taken place.
The court heard a detailed forensic investigation also uncovered a strand of Miss Patterson’s hair in the first defendant’s car, and matching sand granules were found on the remains, the tyres of his car and shoes at his home.
The prosecutor called for the first defendant to get the death penalty for intentionally killing Patterson.
He said because the defendant is Muslim, the Islamic Shari’a principal of qasas (retribution) should be exacted in the form of the death penalty.