Crime took place in 2022, in a building in northeast Paris; Lola was attacked with scissors and a box cutter and suffocated with duct tape, according to the investigation.
The French court sentenced a woman, this Friday (24), to unconditional life imprisonment, the maximum sentence under French legislation, for raping, torturing and killing a 12-year-old teenager in 2022. Lola’s murder in the building where she lived, in Paris, caused a political storm in France, when the extreme right and the right highlighted that the perpetrator of the crime was an undocumented Algerian.
Dahbia Benkired, 27, became the first woman sentenced in France to unconditional life imprisonment, as had also been requested by the Prosecutor’s Office.
The Paris court highlighted in its decision “the extreme cruelty” of the facts and the “indescribable psychological damage caused to the victim and family” in “almost unspeakable” circumstances.
“I beg your pardon, it’s horrible what I did. That’s all I have to say,” Benkired said in his last words before the judges and popular jury retired for deliberation.
The crime took place on October 14, 2022 in a building in northeast Paris, where Lola’s parents lived and worked as janitors and Benkired’s sister also lived. Surveillance images from the residence located in a family neighborhood showed the accused approaching the 12-year-old teenager as the girl returned from school.
Benkired forced the girl to accompany her to her sister’s apartment, where he raped her, attacked her with scissors and a box cutter and asphyxiated her with duct tape, according to the investigation.
Then she placed the corpse in a trunk and fled. Even though she returned to her sister’s apartment, Benkired was arrested at a friend’s house a day later.
Despite the maximum sentence, Benkired will be able to apply for parole when he completes 30 years in prison. The Court, however, may refuse if it considers it dangerous.
The trial did not allow us to know the true motivations for the murder, as the accused maintained incoherent, oscillating and contradictory explanations during the investigation. Her lawyer, Alexandre Valois, pointed out the “traumas” experienced by his client since childhood, such as rape, prostitution and cannabis consumption.
*With information from AFP
Published by Nícolas Robert
