Crowds gathered outside the trial of an Algerian woman accused of raping, torturing and murdering a 12-year-old girl have called for her to receive the death penalty.
Dahbia Benkired, 27, an Algerian migrant living in France, is currently facing the rare sentence of life imprisonment after allegedly luring schoolgirl Lola Daviet into her apartment on October 14, 2022, before sexually assaulting and killing her.
The verdict is expected to be delivered this afternoon.
Before the final hearing of the six-day trial began on Friday morning, dozens of people congregated in front of the courthouse, holding placards with slogans reading: ‘The death penalty saves lives,’ and ‘Let’s hang Dahbia, let’s save Lolas’.
Footage of demonstrators outside the court have also emerged online, showing supporters of Lola’s family speaking through megaphones while calling for ‘reinstatement of the supreme penalty’ and ‘life sentences for the murderers of our people’.
Benkired, who had been homeless and reportedly earning money as a prostitute at the time, is accused of forcing the child to perform a sex act on the her ‘for her pleasure’ before partially severing Lola’s head and stuffing her body into a suitcase.
Speaking in court on Wednesday, Benkired gave a chilling recount of how the fateful day unfolded, revealing that Lola had even begged not to be hurt by the woman before being led into her apartment.
According to the accused, Benkired had fallen into an argument with ‘the love of her life’ ex-partner Mustapha M. ‘I said to myself in my head I’m going to hurt someone,’ she recalled.
The alleged killer told the court how she had even planned to shoot Mustapha using his own gun she claims he had in his home.
‘I wanted to hurt him, but not little Lola. He hurt me so much that I wanted revenge, I hated him,’ she said. ‘I love him very much, but I wanted to hurt him. He had a gun at home, I was planning to shoot him, but not to kill him’.
But just 15 minutes after the pair had fought, seething with rage, she crossed paths with Lola as she was returning home from school.
‘I passed a woman with her baby. And then Lola. I asked her to open the door for me because I didn’t have a badge,’ Benkired told the court.
Lola then allegedly helped the woman take her suitcases up to her apartment, as Benkired admitted she already knew in that moment she was planning to hurt her.
She pulled on Lola’s arm to get her into the elevator up to her apartment as she begged: ‘Madam, please don’t hurt me.’ Benkired chillingly said she told the child ‘don’t worry, I won’t hurt you,’ in response.
Once Lola was in Benkired’s home, the accused woman told the court she asked her to undress and take a shower, admitting that Lola appeared ‘scared’ during this time.
Benkired went on to explain how she sexually assaulted her and ‘slammed her head against the shower wall with my hand,’ insisting it was ‘really not hard’.
‘In the shower, for me, she turned into a ghost. She said nothing, she didn’t talk,’ Benkired recalled. ‘I was told that when I taped her up, she was still alive. For me, she was dead’.
After several minutes of slow agony, the child died of suffocation from the tape. Her body also showed signs of knife mutilation.
‘There are a multitude of wounds on Lola’s body, at least 38. At least two blows with scissors perforated the rib cage, causing unimaginable suffering,’ the Attorney General said on Friday.
‘Her (Benkired’s) goal was to inflict acute physical and mental pain on her victim, denying all human dignity. This is the very definition of acts of torture and barbarity’.
During Monday’s hearing, several family members were forced to leave the court as images of Lola’s injuries were shown, while other shocking details came to light, including that she had ‘visible traumatic injuries’ on her genitals.
The 12-year-old girl was ‘vaginally and anally penetrated’ while she was still alive, according to the medical examiner’s examinations.
But throughout her trial, Benkired admitted to forcing oral sex on Lola but continues denied any act of penetration, despite forensic findings.
After forcing Lola to perform sex acts on her, the accused said she then ‘started to slap her’ because she was ‘afraid she would tell her family. All the hatred I had inside me, I took it out on her… Either way, I knew she was going to die’.
‘It’s not that I wanted to kill her, but that I wanted to hurt someone. But since I had raped her, I might as well kill her,’ Benkired said.
The schoolgirl suffered 38 stab and scissor wounds on her back and neck before dying from asphyxia, a doctor told the Assize Court in Paris on Monday.
‘There was hemorrhagic trauma to various parts of the body,’ particularly to the child’s private parts, the doctor said.
Lola also had a ‘large wound’ on her face, a severed neck and a slashed back, likely caused by knives, while her ‘head was partially severed’.
‘There is physical, psychological and moral suffering’, the doctor added , as images of Lola’s injuries were shown to the court on day two of Benkired’s trial.
‘Asphyxia is very anxiety-provoking, it goes beyond physical pain. There were probably one or more impacts to the head, which creates physical pain.’
But on Wednesday, Benkired claimed she had brutally stabbed the girl after she ‘began to see her as a sheep’.
‘The skin was hard, like a sheep’s,’ explained the accused, who added that it was at this point that she wrote the numbers 0 and 1 on Lola’s feet.
According to respected French newspaper Le Monde, Benkired allegedly told investigators that she saw a ‘ghost’ in Lola and acted out of ‘fear’ of this ‘devil incarnate.’ The probe showed she had conducted searches online into witchcraft days before the murder.
On Wednesday, Nicolas Estano, 47, a clinical psychologist and expert witness, told the court that even though ‘sexual sadism is something quite rare,’ he believes Benkired’s actions expose ‘an almost sexual pleasure in the abuse inflicted on someone’.
Following the alleged murder, Benkired bound the child’s legs, feet, wrists and face in scotch tape, before stuffing her body into a plastic suitcase.
Benkired then allegedly dragged her body around Paris in the plastic trunk, before dumping it on the street where it was found by a homeless man.
But CCTV, seen earlier by the court, showed the moment Benkired allegedly opened a suitcase containing the girl’s body while at a bar on Rue Manin just hours after the killing.
She arrived at the restaurant with two standard-sized suitcases and one much larger bag. Footage shows her chatting to a man while the large trunk – which prosecutors allege contained Lola’s body – lay on the tiled floor beside her.
At one point, Benkired appeared to point to the suitcase, opening it slightly as if to show its contents. The man briefly touched the lid and looked inside before standing up. It is not clear if he realised what the case was carrying.
A police investigation revealed that a pair of scissors, an oyster knife and an IKEA knife were later found in Benkired’s flat with traces of blood.
Benkired settled in France in 2013, aged 14, but was subject to an expulsion order after overstaying a student visa in August 2022, just two months before Lola was murdered.
Speaking in court on Wednesday, Lola’s heartbroken mother Delphine Daviet told how her husband, who had stopped drinking alcohol, began the habit again the day his daughter died.
He drank from morning to night,’ she said. He ‘died of grief,’ devastated by ‘his demons,’ she added. Lola’s father, Johan, passed away in February last year.
Before he died, Johan had hung a letter on the door of Benkired’s apartment, where she is said to have tortured and murdered the young girl.
‘My darling, I still don’t understand why there was so much cruelty and barbarity towards you, you who were so kind.’ ‘I can’t wait to see you again,’ he wrote on the note. ‘Your dad, who loves you for life’.
Delphine has implored the courts ‘to do whatever is necessary to ensure that this person is locked up for life,’ adding: ‘Do not give anything other than life imprisonment.’
