A Paris court has convicted and sentenced Dahbia Benkired, 27, to life imprisonment without possibility of parole for a minimum of 30 years for raping and murdering 12-year-old schoolgirl Lola Daviet an act which shocked France and rekindled controversy over immigration and security.
Benkired, Algerian and ordered out of France on leave, became the first woman in the country’s history to be given a whole-life sentence the most extreme French punishment, previously reserved for prominent offenders such as serial killer Michel Fourniret and 2015 Paris terror attack defendant Salah Abdeslam.
Lola was murdered in October 2022, and her body was discovered wrapped up in a trunk just outside her family home in the 19th arrondissement of Paris. The brutality of the crime provoked national outrage and grief, and political storm as far-right factions utilized Benkired’s migrant background to demand harsher border and deportation policies.
The ruling, delivered following a deeply charged trial attended by the parents of the victim, brought an end to one of France’s most sinister criminal trials in living memory.
