Woman in France, 27, gets whole-life sentence for rape & murder of girl, 12

A woman in France was sentenced to whole-life imprisonment after she raped and murdered a 12-year-old girl in Paris, France.

According to the BBC, 27-year-old Algerian Dahbia Benkired must spend at least 30 years in jail after a panel of judges and a jury imposed France's harshest possible penalty.

Benkired is the first woman to receive France's extremely rare whole-life sentence, where she will not be allowed parole or a reduction in sentence.

She joins other notable criminals like French serial rapist and killer Michel Fourniret and Salah Abdeslam, who was part of the 2015 Paris attacks that killed 130 people.

A plastic storage box

The girl, Lola Daviet, was murdered in October 2022, and her body was discovered in a plastic storage box in the courtyard of a building, the BBC reported.

Surveillance footage of the afternoon of Oct. 14, 2022, showed Benkired, then 24, approaching Daviet as she returned home from school.

Benkired then lured Daviet into an apartment in the building that her sister was subletting.

She then sexually assaulted Daviet for more than one and a half hours before attacking the girl with scissors and a box cutter.

Benkired used duct tape to bind Daviet, including around her head, causing the child to die from asphyxiation.

Daviet's father was the building's caretaker, and when his daughter did not come home that day, he retrieved surveillance footage showing Benkired with Daviet in the building's hallway that afternoon.

Benkired was subsequently arrested for murder, rape and acts of torture.

This case sparked a wave of anti-immigrant sentiment in France.

It was revealed that Benkired had overstayed in France after her student visa expired.

She had entered France legally as a student in 2014 but failed to renew her visa. In 2022, she was stopped at an airport in Paris and given 30 days to leave the country, the BBC reported.

A politician from the far-right National Rally Party blamed the French government's "lax" migration policy, stating that the suspect from this "barbaric act should not have been in our country."

Daviet's parents at the time denounced "any use of the name and image of [our] child for political ends."

"Psychopathic"

During Benkired's trial, the prosecutor argued for an "irreducible life sentence" to reflect the "extreme gravity" of the crimes committed and their "cruelty" as well as the "suffering" caused to Daviet's family, according to France24.

The BBC reported that after being examined by psychiatric experts, she was found to have "psychopathic" traits.

Before the jurors began their deliberations, Benkired addressed the court and asked for forgiveness.

"I ask for forgiveness and what I did is horrible," she said.

When delivering the verdict, the presiding judge described Benkired's acts as "true torture", France 24 reported.

"In determining the appropriate sentence, the court took into account the unspeakable psychological damage to the victim and her family in such violent and almost unspeakable circumstances," said the judge.

Top photos via Rafeal Sereti/X & Edna Cracra Poubelle/X