A woman who raped and murdered 12-year-old Lola Daviet in Paris has been handed a rare whole-life sentence in a case that has shocked France. Dahbia Benkired, aged 27, must spend at least 30 years in prison after a panel of judges and a jury decided to impose the country's harshest possible penalty.
A whole-life term is extremely rare in France and Benkired is the first woman to receive it. Those who have been given the sentence include serial killer and rapist Michel Fourniret and jihadist Salah Abdeslam, who took part in the 2015 Paris attacks which killed 130 people.
Following the verdict, Lola's mother Delphine Daviet said: We believed in justice and we got it. Her brother Thibault added: We have restored the memory of my sister, we have restored the truth.
Warning: This story contains distressing details
Lola was murdered in October 2022. Her body was discovered in a plastic storage box in the courtyard of the building where she lived in north-eastern Paris. Benkired is an Algerian immigrant who was under orders to leave the country. The prosecutor in the trial had argued for Benkired to receive the longest sentence possible.
During the trial, CCTV footage showed Benkired approaching Lola after she returned home from school and luring her into an apartment where she was assaulted. The presiding judge referred to the extreme cruelty of the criminal acts, describing them as true torture.
Benkired had been in France on a student visa that she failed to renew. Politicians have used the case to push immigration narratives, highlighting the sensitive intersection of crime, justice, and national policy in France.
