Paris court to hand down France’s first life sentence to female in child murder case

A Paris court has sentenced an Algerian woman to life imprisonment without the possibility of early release for raping, torturing, and murdering a 12-year-old schoolgirl — marking the first time a woman in France has received this maximum punishment.

On October 24, the court handed Dahbia Benkired the country’s harshest sentence for a crime that shocked France. At the time of the murder, the woman was under a deportation order for overstaying her student visa, according to French media reports.

The 12-year-old victim, Lola Daviet, had returned from school on October 14, 2022, to her apartment building in northeastern Paris, where her parents worked as caretakers. When the girl failed to return home, her father reported her missing and reviewed the building’s surveillance footage.

The recordings showed Benkired, who was homeless and unemployed but staying at her sister’s apartment in the same building, entering the lobby with the child. About 90 minutes later, she was seen again in the entrance hall with several suitcases — one of which was later found to contain the girl’s body.

The suspect was arrested shortly after the killing and examined by psychiatric experts, who found her to display “psychopathic” traits but otherwise mentally fit to stand trial.

Only a few offenders have received life sentences without parole in France since the penalty was introduced in 1994. They include serial killer and rapist Michel Fourniret and jihadist Salah Abdeslam, a participant in the 2015 Paris terrorist attacks that killed 130 people.

In delivering the verdict, the presiding judge cited the “extreme cruelty of the criminal acts,” calling them “true torture.” Investigators determined that Benkired raped and tortured the girl before suffocating her.

He added, “In determining the appropriate sentence, the court took into account the unspeakable psychological damage to the victim and her family in such violent and almost unspeakable circumstances.”

Renewed spotlight on immigration issues

This aspect of the convicted murderer's background has reignited a heated debate over the country's immigration policies. Conservative and far-right politicians called for stricter enforcement of deportation orders after it emerged that the Algerian woman had ignored instructions to leave the country.

Following the girl’s murder, National Rally party president Jordan Bardella wrote on X that the suspect “had no business being in France,” with his far-right rival Éric Zemmour echoing the sentiment, urging that Lola’s murderer should never have crossed her path.

Benkired had first entered France on a student visa in 2016 but failed to renew it. In July 2022, she was stopped at Paris' Orly airport and issued a 30-day notice to depart the country. 

The victim’s parents, urged political figures to stop using their daughter’s death for political gain. Lola's father, who had found the surveillance footage that helped lead to Benkired’s arrest, tragically died of cardiac arrest less than two years after the murder, after revealing in a TV interview that he had relapsed back into an alcohol addiction following the horrific loss. 

By Nazrin Sadigova