An Algerian woman has been sentenced to life in prison for brutally raping, torturing, and murdering 12-year-old Lola Daviet in Paris.
The crime was described by the prosecutor as “extremely cruel,” and the mother called the woman—who herself asked for forgiveness during the trial—a “devilish monster.” Earlier reports suggested that the murder was carried out as part of a magical African ritual requiring the beheading of “a white, blond child.”
Lola’s father, Johan, drank himself to death after the murder of his daughter.
The 27-year-old illegal immigrant Dahbia Benkired, from Algeria, was on Friday sentenced to the harshest penalty available under French law after four hours of deliberation.
The judge justified the unusually severe sentence—life imprisonment without the possibility of parole—by citing the crime’s “extreme cruelty” and that it involved “true torture.”
“This decision will not bring Lola back. But we hope it will be a step in your process of recovery,” said the judge, as the murdered girl’s devastated mother and brother sobbed in each other’s arms in the courtroom.
Father “died of grief”
Lola’s father, Johan, could not be present in court: he died sometime after the murder. The mother told investigators that due to overwhelming sorrow, he drank from morning to night—and that he “died of grief.”
Before he died, Johan had hung a letter on the door of Benkired’s apartment—the place where his daughter had been raped, tortured, and murdered.
“My darling, I still don’t understand why you were subjected to such cruelty and barbarity, you who were so kind,” read the letter to the dead girl.
“I long for the day I can see you again. Your dad, who loves you forever.”
“This devilish monster”
According to the prosecutor, Dahbia Benkired’s goal was to ‘inflict acute pain on the victim and deny her all human dignity,’ reported the Daily Mail.
The crime was discovered when Lola failed to return home from school on October 14, 2022, in Paris’s 19th arrondissement. The mother told the court about her final goodbye when Lola left for school.
“I kissed her, I said, ‘See you later.’ Then she met this creature—this devilish monster.”
Surveillance cameras showed Benkired dragging a suitcase containing the girl’s mutilated body through a Paris bar that same evening. She had tricked Lola into helping her carry the suitcase up to her apartment before murdering her. The suitcase and its contents were later found that evening by a homeless man.
The body had been subjected to extreme sexual violence, mutilation, and so many stab wounds that they could not be counted—but there were at least 38.
“What I did was horrible”
Earlier this week, Fria Tider reported that Dahbia Benkired appeared to have been inspired by African witchcraft. The weekend before the murder, she reportedly spoke about a custom that, according to her, involved first killing a “white, blond child” and then cutting off its head to see in which direction the blood flowed—to locate a treasure. Benkired had also searched online for witchcraft rituals in the days leading up to the killing.
It was also reported that Lola had the numbers 1 and 0 drawn on her hands and feet, that Benkired had searched for how to perform human sacrifices, and that she claimed to have collected Lola’s blood in a bottle and drunk it.
Before sentencing, Benkired asked for forgiveness:
“I ask for forgiveness. What I did was horrible,” she said in court.
“I couldn’t save my Lola”
Lola’s mother, Delphine Daviet, testified about the family’s endless grief and how each family member blamed themselves for the murder.
“I couldn’t save my Lola,” she said in court.
Dahbia Benkired should not even have been in France, as she had overstayed her student visa and was living there illegally. Nevertheless, she was able to assault Lola “for pleasure and to satisfy sexual urges,” according to the prosecutor.
The prosecutor demanded a life sentence “to protect society from a woman whose extreme dangerousness I am firmly convinced of.”
A so-called ‘irreducible’ life sentence is the harshest punishment possible under French law.
At the time of the murder, Dahbia Benkired was homeless and reportedly working as a prostitute. She came to France in 2013 and should have been deported two months before the murder.
