An Algerian woman found guilty of raping, torturing and murdering a 12-year-old girl in France has been sentenced to life in prison with no parole.
Dahbia Benkired, 27, was described as a ‘monster devil’ by the family of her victim Lola Daviet as she received the most severe sentence France can enforce – making her the first woman in the country to be handed the maximum penalty.
After four hours of jury deliberations, the court decided upon the rare sentence due to the ‘extreme cruelty’ of the crime, which was described by the presiding judge as ‘true torture’.
‘This decision will not give you back Lola. However, we hope that it will be a step in your recovery process,’ he added, as the young girl’s devastated mother and son sobbed in an embrace in the courthouse.
Lola’s defiled corpse was found in a suitcase in the lobby of the building where she lived in the French capital in October 2022. Her legs, feet, wrists and face were bound with scotch tape and across her body were at least 38 stab wounds.
‘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,’ the Attorney General said Friday.
Prior to the guilty verdict, Benkired, an Algerian migrant, concluded proceedings with one sentence: ‘I ask for forgiveness, what I did was horrible’. She now has 10 days to appeal.
Before the final hearing 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’.
The killer should not even have been in France, after overstaying a student visa, yet she was left free to prey on Lola ‘for pleasure and the satisfaction of sexual urges,’ said the Attorney General.
Dahbia Benkired (pictured) has been found guilty of raping, torturing and murdering the 12-year-old girl in October 2022
The horrifying torture Lola Daviet, 12, endured at the hands of the Algerian migrant who raped and murdered her has been revealed at court over a six-day trial
Addressing the jury, they added: ‘Today you have to judge three crimes marked by particular cruelty which are all punishable by life imprisonment.
‘They are crimes which plunged a family into unspeakable suffering. Dahbia Benkired is extremely dangerous, and there is a maximum risk of her reoffending.’
The Attorney General called for a life sentence that aims ‘to protect society from a woman whose extreme danger I am firmly convinced of.’
A so called ‘irreducible life sentence’ is the harshest penalty possible under the French Penal Code, and often criticised by human rights bodies.
Lola’s mother, Delphine Daviet, 47, was in floods of tears as she faced Benkired in court on Wednesday. ‘Before this tragedy, we had a very simple family life, very attentive to one another,’ she said .
But everything changed on October 14th, 2022, when Lola was abducted from the apartment block where she lived with her parents, and brother.
Recalling their last moments together, Daviet said: ‘I kissed her, I said ‘See you later’.
‘Then she encountered this thing – this devil monster.
‘I feel guilty, I couldn’t save my Lola. My husband and my son also blame themselves a lot.’
Daviet’s husband, 49-year-old Johan Daviet, died in February last year, due to heavy drinking related to the family tragedy.
He drank from morning to night,’ she said. He ‘died of grief,’ devastated by ‘his demons,’ she added.
Before he died, Johan had hung a letter on the door of Benkired’s apartment, where she raped, 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 had earlier 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.’
Benkired, who had been homeless and reportedly earning money as a prostitute at the time, forced 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 chillingly recounted how the fateful day unfolded, revealing that Lola had even begged not to be hurt by the woman before being led into her apartment.
Lola is pictured in this CCTV footage still wearing a white coat and carrying what appears to be her schoolbag following Benkired into an apartment building
Thibault Daviet brother of Lola and Delphine Daviet-Ropital, mother of Lola, arriving at the Paris Assize Court for the trial of Benkired on October 24, 2025
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 killer told the court how she had even planned to shoot Mustapha using his own gun she claimed 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 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, she 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.
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.
Benkired settled in France in 2013, aged 14, but was subject to an expulsion order after overstaying a student visa
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 denied any act of penetration, despite forensic findings.
After forcing Lola to perform sex acts on her, Benkired 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 said 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.
CCTV footage shows the moment Dahbia Benkired opened the suitcase she stuffed Lola into while sitting in a busy Paris bar
According to respected French newspaper Le Monde, Benkired 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 murder, Benkired bound the child’s legs, feet, wrists and face in scotch tape, before stuffing her body into a plastic suitcase.
Benkired then 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 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 said 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.
