{"id":527684,"date":"2025-10-25T20:30:12","date_gmt":"2025-10-25T20:30:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/527684\/"},"modified":"2025-10-25T20:30:12","modified_gmt":"2025-10-25T20:30:12","slug":"paris-court-to-hand-down-frances-first-life-sentence-to-female-in-child-murder-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/527684\/","title":{"rendered":"Paris court to hand down France\u2019s first life sentence to female in child murder case"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Paris court has sentenced an Algerian woman to life imprisonment without the possibility of early release for raping, torturing, and murdering a 12-year-old schoolgirl \u2014 marking the first time a woman in France has received this maximum punishment.<\/strong><\/p>\n

On October 24, the court handed Dahbia Benkired the country\u2019s harshest sentence for a crime that shocked France. At the time of the murder, the woman was under a deportation order for overstaying her student visa, according to French media<\/strong><\/a> reports.<\/p>\n

The 12-year-old victim, Lola Daviet, had returned from school on October 14, 2022, to her apartment building in northeastern Paris, where her parents worked as caretakers. When the girl failed to return home, her father reported her missing and reviewed the building\u2019s surveillance footage.<\/p>\n

The recordings showed Benkired, who was homeless and unemployed but staying at her sister\u2019s apartment in the same building, entering the lobby with the child. About 90 minutes later, she was seen again in the entrance hall with several suitcases \u2014 one of which was later found to contain the girl\u2019s body.<\/p>\n

The suspect was arrested shortly after the killing and examined by psychiatric experts, who found her to display \u201cpsychopathic\u201d traits but otherwise mentally fit to stand trial.<\/p>\n

Only a few offenders have received life sentences without parole in France since the penalty was introduced in 1994. They include serial killer and rapist Michel Fourniret and jihadist Salah Abdeslam, a participant in the 2015 Paris terrorist attacks that killed 130 people.<\/p>\n

In delivering the verdict, the presiding judge cited the \u201cextreme cruelty of the criminal acts,\u201d calling them \u201ctrue torture.\u201d Investigators determined that Benkired raped and tortured the girl before suffocating her.<\/p>\n

He added, \u201cIn determining the appropriate sentence, the court took into account the unspeakable psychological damage to the victim and her family in such violent and almost unspeakable circumstances.\u201d<\/p>\n

Renewed spotlight on immigration issues<\/strong><\/p>\n

This aspect of the convicted murderer’s background has reignited <\/a><\/strong>a heated debate over the country’s immigration policies. Conservative and far-right politicians called for stricter enforcement of deportation orders after it emerged that the Algerian woman had ignored instructions to leave the country.<\/p>\n

Following the girl\u2019s murder, National Rally party president Jordan Bardella wrote <\/strong><\/a>on X that the suspect \u201chad no business being in France,\u201d with his far-right rival \u00c9ric Zemmour echoing the sentiment, urging that Lola\u2019s murderer should never have crossed her path.<\/p>\n

Benkired had first entered France on a student visa in 2016 but failed to renew it. In July 2022, she was stopped at Paris’ Orly airport and issued a 30-day notice to depart the country.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The victim\u2019s parents, urged political figures to stop using their daughter\u2019s death for political gain. Lola’s father, who had found the surveillance footage that helped lead to Benkired\u2019s arrest, tragically died of cardiac arrest less than two years after the murder, after revealing in a TV interview that he had relapsed back into an alcohol addiction following the horrific loss.\u00a0<\/p>\n

By Nazrin Sadigova<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Paris court has sentenced an Algerian woman to life imprisonment without the possibility of early release for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":527685,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5309],"tags":[23355,7503,7502,2000,299,36,23356,23359,466,23358,23357,23354],"class_list":{"0":"post-527684","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-france","8":"tag-analysis-of-azerbaijan","9":"tag-azerbaijan","10":"tag-baku","11":"tag-eu","12":"tag-europe","13":"tag-france","14":"tag-important-news-of-azerbaijan","15":"tag-international-experts","16":"tag-interviews","17":"tag-interviews-with-azerbaijani-analysts","18":"tag-news-from-baku","19":"tag-news-of-azerbaijan"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115436704486491443","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=527684"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527684\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/527685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=527684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=527684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=527684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}