Algerian woman gets life sentence for rape, torture and murder of French girl

A French court on Friday sentenced an Algerian woman to life imprisonment without parole for raping, torturing and murdering a girl in Paris, making her the first woman to receive this maximum sentence.

Dahbia Benkired was handed an “irreducible life sentence” for killing 12-year-old Lola Daviet in the French capital in 2022, in a case that horrified the country and sparked anti-immigration fervour because the woman did not have the right to be in France.

The sentence is the harshest under the French penal code.

“We believed in justice and we got it,” said Lola’s mother, Delphine Daviet following the verdict.

Benkired, now aged 27, was detained after Lola Daviet went missing in the northeast of Paris.

Her body was then found in a trunk in the lobby of the building where her father and mother worked as caretakers.