An Algerian woman raped, tortured and murdered a 12-year-old girl after a dispute with the child’s mother, a court heard today in a case that has shocked France.
Dahbia Benkired, 27, is accused of luring Lola Daviet to her death, partially severing her head before suffocating her, after the girl’s mother refused to give her a pass key to an apartment block.
Investigators say Benkired slashed the schoolgirl with scissors and a box cutter then bound her up in duct tape, including around her face, leading to her death by asphyxia.
Depraved Benkired admitted in court today that she forced the young girl to undress and wash herself, then perform a sex act on her ‘for my pleasure’.
The presiding judge of the Assize Court told the jurors that Lola’s ‘head was partially severed’ at the neck.
In October 2022, Lola’s body was found in a trunk in the lobby of the building where her father and mother worked as caretakers.
Building residents saw Benkired in the lobby of the apartment block in the 19th district, carrying suitcases and a heavy trunk covered in a blanket, the investigation showed.
An hour and a half earlier, security footage showed Benkired approaching the girl as she returned from school, then leading her into the flat her sister occupied in the building.
She placed the body in a trunk and exited the building, pausing outside a cafe, where she told a client who suspected something strange in her luggage that she was ‘selling a kidney’, investigators said.
She then convinced a friend to drive her and the bags to his home, before taking a taxi with the trunk back to the building where her sister lived.
She fled when she saw police deployed in the area, but was arrested the next day.
A police investigation revealed that a pair of scissors, an oyster knife and an IKEA knife were found in Benkired’s flat with traces of blood.
The Algerian woman had a tough upbringing with aunts before she settled in France in 2013, the investigation showed.
She told the court that she had been abused by family and neighbours as she grew up, claiming her aunts ‘forced her to watch pornographic films… and groped her in the forest.’
It was reported at the time of the killing that she was was the subject of an expulsion order, prompting stinging criticism from the right and one of the most bitter political debates in recent memory.
She claimed to have suffered something of a mental breakdown following her parents’ deaths in 2019 and 2020. She said she would smoke up to ’20 [cannabis] joints a day’ to deal with this ‘tipping point’.
She had overstayed a student visa and had failed to comply with a notice issued in August to leave France within 30 days.
She told investigators she had been angry with the girl’s mother, who had refused to give her a badge to get through the apartment block’s front door, after her sister had given her a key to her flat.
The probe showed she had conducted searches online into witchcraft days before the murder.
Benkired, whose trial is to last until next Friday, faces a maximum sentence of life in jail.
The girl’s family sat in court on Friday, wearing T-shirts with the words: ‘You were the sun of our life, you will be the star of our nights.’ One woman in her fifties broke down in tears when the defendant entered the dock.
When asked by the judge what they expected from the trial, Lola’s family said they wanted just and for the truth to be revealed.
Lola’s brother Thibault Daviet said, referencing his late father: ‘I would like to speak on behalf of the whole family… and of course my father, who is unfortunately no longer here because of the same person.
‘We would like you to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, to all of France and to us’.
Benkired, speaking to the girl’s mourning family, today said in court: ‘I would like to ask the whole family for forgiveness. What I did was horrible and I regret it’.
Conservative and far-right politicians seized on the case to call for better immigration law enforcement, after Benkired was found to have overstayed a student visa and failed to comply with a notice to leave France.
But the victim’s mother urged politicians to stop exploiting her daughter’s death.
