Overview
- A Paris court found 27-year-old Dahbia Benkired guilty of raping, torturing and murdering 12-year-old Lola Daviet in 2022 and imposed France’s highest available punishment.
- Accounts of the sentence differ by outlet, with AFP reporting an irreducible life term with no early release and others describing life imprisonment with parole eligibility only after 30 years.
- The panel emphasized the severity of the crimes in setting the punishment, noting the lasting psychological damage to the victim’s relatives.
- Trial reporting described sexual assault, dozens of stab wounds and suffocation with tape, with the body later transported in a container.
- Psychiatric experts cited psychopathic tendencies without finding legal insanity, the motive remained unresolved, and the defendant’s prior removal order from France renewed deportation debates as the family urged against political exploitation.