Woman in France sentenced to life in prison for rape, torture and murder of 12-year-old girl in Paris

By Catherine Nicholls, Niamh Kennedy and Joseph Ataman, CNN

(CNN) — A woman who raped, tortured and murdered a 12-year-old girl in Paris three years ago was sentenced to life in prison without parole on Friday, according to CNN affiliate BFMTV.

Dahbia Benkired, a 27-year-old woman from Algeria, must spend at least 30 years in prison for her crimes against Lola Daviet, BFMTV reported. She is the first woman in France to receive the sentence – the harshest under the French penal code, BFMTV added.

In October 2022, Daviet’s body was found mutilated and stuffed into a plastic box in a communal area outside the building she lived in, a statement from the Paris police prosecutor said at the time.

The victim’s body was discovered just hours after she was first reported missing, the statement said.

CCTV showed the schoolgirl entering her apartment building alongside Benkired at 3:15 p.m. on the day she was murdered. Less than two hours later, the killer was seen leaving the building alone, carrying heavy luggage, the statement said.

Daviet died of cardiorespiratory failure with signs of asphyxiation and cervical compression, according to the police prosecutor’s statement.

She had multiple other injuries, “notably to her face, back and with large cuts to her neck, which did not play a role her death according to the coroner’s conclusions of her cause of death,” the police statement said.

Benkired told police that she had led Daviet to her sister’s apartment, which was in the same building that the victim lived in, the statement said.

There, according to the statement, she said she forced the girl to take a shower before “committing sexual assaults and other violence on her that resulted in her death,” before she hid the child’s body in the plastic box.

In court on Friday, Benkired said that her crimes were “horrible,” asking for forgiveness before deliberations were made, BFMTV reported.

In a statement after the killer was sentenced, Lola Daviet’s brother thanked the French justice system for the sentencing of Benkired, saying that his family was “happy with the response we received,” BFMTV reported. The victim’s mother added that this was the case “even if it won’t give us back our Lola,” the outlet added.

Clotilde Lepetit, Daviet’s family laywer, welcomed a “fair decision, based on reason, humanity, truth and memory,” according to BFMTV.

“We restored this young girl’s memory. We restored a shattered truth,” she said, according to the outlet.

Alexandre Valois, Benkired’s lawyer, said that Friday’s verdict did not come as a surprise. The killer has not yet decided whether or not to appeal her sentence, he told journalists, according to BFMTV.

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