TWO thugs have been locked up for mugging a 21-year-old man as he walked through a churchyard.

Chef Nicholas Amos and a teenager attacked Alam Aziz and stole £930 cash and two mobile telephones, Maidstone Crown Court was told.

Relatives of the pair erupted in anger as Amos was jailed for four-and-a-half years and the youth, aged 17, was sentenced to three-and-a-half years youth custody.

The court heard that Mr Aziz was walking through the cemetery off Sandgate Road, Folkestone, on July 25 last year when he encountered Amos and the teenager.

The victim had the large amount of money on him to pay a deposit on a flat.

Judge Jeremy Carey said the pair set about an innocent man and stole from him.

"You did so in circumstances where you had tailed him to a secluded place," he said. "You used violence. You had seen him remove cash and knew he was a soft target."

They inflicted a considerable beating on Mr Aziz, leaving him with bruises, cuts and grazes.

The judge said the attackers were both habitual drug users and the teenager, who cannot be named because of his age, was smoking cannabis at the time.

"Perhaps more important, Mr Aziz must have been truly terrified by that experience," he said. "It was, therefore, a bad case of what is sometimes categorised as a street robbery."

Amos, of Manor Road, Folkestone, and the teenager, also from Folkestone, denied robbery, but were convicted.

Judge Carey told Amos, who has a previous conviction for robbery, that he had to think long and hard about imposing an indeterminate sentence for public protection.

He said he had decided against it, but "it is a very close run thing".

The judge told the teenager that he had to bear in mind he was still a young man, although he seemed confident in beating up those who were easy pickings.