Woman who murdered 12-year-old Lola sentenced to life in prison without parole

Dahbia Benkired, found guilty of the murder of 12-year-old Lola Daviet after raping and torturing her, was sentenced on Friday by the Paris criminal court to life imprisonment without parole, becoming the first woman to receive this maximum penalty provided for by the penal code.

The irreducible life sentence had been requested in the morning by the prosecutor, to "ensure the protection of society, prevent the commission of new offences and restore social balance."

Shortly before the verdict was delivered, the judge gave the defendant a final opportunity to speak. Benkired apologized: "What I did was terrible. That is all I have to say."

When announcing the verdict, after four hours of deliberation, the presiding judge stressed "the extreme cruelty of the criminal acts", "genuine torment."

"To set a just sentence, the court took into account the unspeakable psychological harm caused to the victim and the family in circumstances so violent and almost unnameable", he added.

Since its introduction in 1994, "true life" sentences had until now been pronounced only four times in ordinary criminal law in France, against four men.

© AFP

The case that shocked a nation

After six days of hearings, it was not possible to identify the true motives and, more generally, the process that led Dahbia Benkired to act.

Then aged 24 and marked by clear social precarity, she lived intermittently with her sister in Paris.

On October 14, 2022, she forced Lola, the caretakers’ daughter, into her apartment.

In a closed setting, she then raped, tortured and killed her by blocking her airways with adhesive tape, an ordeal that lasted around 97 minutes.

What followed was an erratic escape, with Benkired carrying a trunk in which she had placed the girl’s body. Residents of the apartment building where the defendant lived saw, on the afternoon of 14 October 2022, Benkired dragging several suitcases and a heavy plastic bag into the entrance. About an hour and a half earlier she had been seen on surveillance camera footage speaking to Lola.

In court, the woman said she wanted to take out her anger at her ex-partner on another person. She said she herself had been a victim of violence.

"I didn’t pick her out. She was the first person I came across. She was weaker than me", the defendant told the court.

At trial, three psychiatric experts both ruled out any disorder that could have exempted the accused from criminal responsibility, despite "psychopathic" personality traits, and emphasized their reservations about the possibility of treatment.

"No medication could fundamentally transform Ms. Benkired’s personality. When there is no illness, there is no treatment", the prosecutor said in his morning summation.

The defence lawyer focused on the 24 years of Benkired’s life before the crime: "early childhood trauma" suggested by psychiatrists, family violence, rapes, consumption of cannabis and medications, prostitution, none of which was either formally established or completely ruled out by the investigation. Benkired grew up in Algeria with family members and came to France legally. After her visa expired, she received an order to leave the country.