Woman alleged to have tortured and killed 12-year-old to stand trial in France

A woman who allegedly abused and tortured a 12-year-old girl before leaving her to suffocate will go on trial for murder on Friday in a case that has shocked France and caused political waves.

Lola Daviet’s body was found stuffed into a plastic trunk that had been dumped on the street near her home.

Dahbia Benkired, 27, is accused of the murder of a minor, aggravated rape, torture and an act of barbarity in a case that provoked widespread horror in France three years ago.

The far right also attempted to make political capital from the killing after it was discovered Benkired, who was born in Algeria, had no right to remain in France and had been issued with an order to leave the country two months previously.

Daviet had walked a few hundred yards from school and arrived at her home in the 19th arrondissement of Paris, where her parents were the building’s concierges, just after 3pm on Friday 14 October 2022.

The building’s video surveillance records Benkired, who was homeless and unemployed but staying at her sister’s flat in the building, meeting Lola just after 3pm in front of the building.

Daviet’s parents raised the alarm when their daughter did not arrive home. An hour and a half later, Benkired was filmed in the entrance hallway of the building surrounded by suitcases including a large trunk.

Benkired, who was said to have given confused accounts of events, was examined by several psychiatrists and psychologists but judged able to stand trial. She has been held in Fresnes prison, south of Paris, for the last three years.

Shortly after the killing, Marine Le Pen’s far-right Rassemblement National attempted to make political capital out of the alleged murderer’s irregular migration status. Éric Pauget, of the rightwing Les Républicains, said in parliament that Lola had been killed as a result of France’s purported weakness on immigration.

However, MPs were urged by ministers of the centrist government to “show a little decency”.

The then justice minister, Éric Dupond-Moretti, accused them of playing “petty politics” and using “the coffin of a 12-year-old girl” to advance their political narrative.

In France, any act of sexual penetration of any kind, committed on another person by violence, coercion, threats or surprise, is rape. Benkired faces a life sentence if convicted.

The trial will run until next Friday when a verdict is expected.