A woman who raped and murdered 12-year-old Lola Daviet in Paris has been sentenced to a rare life sentence in a case that shocked France.
Dahbia Benkired, 27, will spend at least 30 years in prison after a judge and jury decided to impose the harshest sentence possible in the country.
In France, lifetime tenure is extremely rare and Benkired is the first woman to receive one.
Those sentenced include serial killer and rapist Michel Fournire and jihadist Salah Abdeslam for his role in the 2015 Paris attacks that killed 130 people.
“We believed in justice and we got it,” Lola’s mother, Delphine Daviet, said after the verdict.
Her brother, Thibaut, added: “We have brought back the memory of my sister and we have also brought back the truth.”
WARNING: This story contains distressing content.
Lola was murdered in October 2022. Her body was found in a plastic storage box in the courtyard of the building she lived in northeast Paris.
Benkired was an Algerian immigrant who was ordered to leave the country. French right-wing and far-right politicians dominated the case.
At trial, prosecutors argued that Benkired should receive the longest possible sentence. Benkired was examined by a psychiatric expert and found to have “psychotic” traits but was otherwise sane.
The prosecutor told the panel of three judges and six jurors: “No amount of medication can fundamentally change Mr. Benkired’s personality. No disease, no treatment.”
Before jurors began deliberations Friday, Benkired told the court: “I ask for forgiveness, what I did was terrible.
“That’s all I have to say.”
CCTV footage from the afternoon of October 14, 2022, shows Benkired, then 24, approaching Lola as she returned home from school.
Benkired reportedly lured Lola to an apartment her older sister was subletting in the building.
Over the course of more than an hour and a half, Benkired sexually assaulted the 12-year-old girl before attacking her with scissors and a cutter.
Benkired bound Lola with duct tape, including around her head, causing her to die from asphyxiation.
As the judge read the verdict, he referred to the “extreme brutality of the crime” and described it as “true torture.”
“In determining the appropriate sentence, the court took into account the untold psychological harm suffered by the victims and their families in these violent and almost unspeakable circumstances,” he said.
Benkired was in France on a student visa but failed to renew it. In July 2022, she was trapped at a Paris airport and ordered to leave the country for 30 days.
Days after Lola’s murder that October, Jordan Bardella, leader of France’s far-right National Union party, wrote to X that the woman “had no need to be in France.”
Hard-right rival Eric Zemmour also wrote on social media: “Lola’s killer should never have crossed her path.”
French Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin criticized the “obscenity” of politicians who “must reflect on the consequences of their words.”
Lola’s mother and her father, Johan Daviet, condemned “the use of (our) child’s name and image for political purposes.”
Mr. Davie died in 2024 at the age of 49.
