France | Female illegal migrant sentenced to life without parole for abduction, rape, murder of schoolgirl

The case sent shockwaves through France and reignited a heated debate over the country's immigration policies.

Algerian illegal migrant Dahbia Benkired has been sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for raping, torturing, and killing 12-year-old Lola Daviet in 2022, the first time such a sentence has ever been handed down to a woman in France.

A Paris court handed down the maximum sentence to 27-year-old Dahbia Benkired on Friday, following her conviction for the kidnapping, rape, torture, and murder of Lola Daviet, whose body was found in a plastic trunk outside her home in northeastern Paris.

Lola's mother and brother embraced and broke down in tears as the verdict was read. Lola's father died in 2024 following his daughter's death.

Throughout the trial, Dahbia Benkired remained largely emotionless and showed no reaction during the reading of the verdict.

The crime horrified France and sparked political debate after it emerged that Benkired, born in Algeria, was undocumented and had been ordered to leave the country [Obligation de quitter le territoire français (OQTF), i.e.: Obligation to Leave French Territory.] two months before the murder.

Lola's body was found stuffed inside a plastic trunk on a Paris street near her home.

The 12-year-old had returned from school on 14 October 2022 to the building in the northeast of the French capital where her parents worked as door attendants.

Surveillance footage showed Benkired, who was homeless and unemployed but staying at her sister's apartment in the same building, meeting the child shortly after 3 pm.

When Lola failed to return home, her parents raised the alarm. An hour and a half later, Benkired was seen on camera again in the building’s entrance hall, surrounded by suitcases, including the large trunk where the girl's body would later be found.

Benkrired was arrested shortly afterwards and, following multiple psychiatric evaluations, deemed fit to stand trial. She has been held at Fresnes prison, south of Paris, for the past three years.

At the Paris court on Friday, after an hour-long closing statement, the attorney general requested an irreducible life sentence (perpétuité incompressible).

Only a handful of such sentences have been handed down since it was introduced in 1994.

The punishment, sometimes referred to as "real life imprisonment," means there is no possibility of early release or a reduction in the length of the sentence.

However, French law allows a review after 30 years, upon request by the convicted person, thus following the European Court of Justice's jurisprudence

27-year-old Dahbia Benkired (TikTok photo)

A special panel of five judges from the Court of Cassation, the country's highest court, may authorise release, but only if it poses no serious threat to public order and after consulting victims' families.

Experts told the court on Thursday that Benkired is criminally responsible for her actions.

They found no sign of mental illness or impaired judgement, describing her as of "normal intelligence" and free of any "psychiatric pathology."

One psychiatric report described her as "cold, passive-aggressive, with contradictory and fantastical speech," exhibiting "pathological narcissism," antisocial behaviour and "a very high risk of reoffending."

A second evaluation found "no depressive, anxious or post-traumatic symptoms" and noted her "very low empathy."

Her emotional detachment has been noted since her arrest. "At no moment did she show any sign of regret, to the point that it made me doubt her guilt despite all the evidence pointing to her. The facts were so horrific that I expected her to break down," a police officer testified.

When shown photos of the tortured victim, Benkired said: "I feel indifferent."

The court also examined Benkired’s past: a childhood marked by violence in Algeria, alleged sexual abuse and early cannabis use after arriving in France at 16.

Unable to find social or professional stability, she claimed that she drifted into sex work.

In her final words to the court before the jury retired to deliberate, Benkired said: "I ask for forgiveness, it's horrible what I did, and that’s all I have to say."

During the hearing, Benkired sat in the dock with a blank stare, never showing emotion.

Members of Lola's family wore matching T-shirts bearing a drawing of the young girl and the words "You will be the sun of our lives and the star of our nights."

France abolished the death penalty in October 1981. Murder is punishable by a maximum of 30 years of criminal imprisonment.

Source: EuroNews, Sophia Khatsenkova, DPN, October 24, 2025

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."

— Oscar Wilde

Comments

USA | What happens in the final weeks before an execution? These reporters were inside the room.

The journalists behind ‘The Last 12 Weeks’ earned extraordinary access to a death penalty defense team—and faced difficult ethical choices Many defense lawyers are naturally cagey. They work in a pressure cooker, protecting their clients’ rights while fighting for the best possible outcome. And arguably, the stakes can’t get any higher than trying to save a client’s life. So no, defense lawyers don’t usually invite journalists into strategy meetings. But that’s what happened when Marshall Project reporter Maurice Chammah and Serial Productions senior producer Alvin Melathe spent the final few months before a Texas execution embedded with a capital defense team.

North Korea | 'I was only 9': North Korean defector recalls childhood memory of public execution

Kim Eun-joo was 9 years old when her teacher stopped their lesson and told the class to follow her outside. The children were marched to a public execution ground in North Korea. “I would cry even when our family dog died,” Kim said in a recent interview with The Korea Times. “But the first time I watched humans killing a human, I had no words for what I was feeling. It was the most brutal scene I have ever seen, in any movie or in real life.” The memory has stayed with her ever since. Now a human rights advocate after defecting from North Korea, Kim recently brought that childhood scene to the 9th World Congress Against the Death Penalty in Paris, where North Korea’s use of public executions and capital punishment was officially placed on the agenda for the first time.

19 July 1943 | Auschwitz's Largest Public Hanging: 12 Polish Prisoners Executed in Escape Reprisal

OSWIECIM, Poland — The SS carried out the largest public hanging in Auschwitz history on July 19, 1943, executing 12 Polish prisoners before other inmates as collective punishment for escapes and civilian contacts. The victims, all from the camp’s surveyors’ labor unit, were hanged on gallows built in front of the camp kitchen during an Auschwitz I roll call. The SS orchestrated this reprisal following prisoner escapes from the surveyors’ detail and unauthorized communication between inmates and civilians. Camp authorities used the recent escapes as a pretext to impose collective punishment.

Former Florida cop to be executed on same day as 80-year-old Pasco man

In an unprecedented move in the modern history of capital punishment, Gov. Ron DeSantis on Tuesday cleared the way for 2 executions to occur on the same day. DeSantis reset the execution of James Duckett, whose execution earlier this year was stayed amid efforts to secure DNA testing and analysis of evidence in his case. Duckett’s execution was reset for July 28. That is the same day previously set for the execution of Dominick Occhicone. Court records indicate that Duckett’s execution is scheduled for noon. Occhicone’s is set to follow at 6 p.m.

Japan: Capital punishment for a minor

Death chamber at Tokyo Detention Center The Supreme Court's recent decision to uphold the death sentence given in a lay judge trial to a 24-year-old man for murders he committed when he was a minor raises questions about the lay judge trial system and capital punishment. These include whether the lay judges correctly understood the spirit of the Juvenile Law in sentencing the defendant to death. It was the 1st death sentence handed down on a minor in a lay judge trial. The murders took place in Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture, in 2010 when Yutaro Chiba was 18 - meaning he fell under the purview of the Juvenile Law. Chiba was convicted of entering his ex-girlfriend's house and stabbing to death the girl's sister and a female friend of the girl with a butcher knife, seriously injuring a male friend of the sister and abducting the girl. Prosecutors said Chiba killed the victims because they were trying to separate him and his former girlfriend. Since Chiba pleaded n...

Texas: The inmates who refused to die quietly and had to be gassed out of their cells before execution

Former crime reporter Michelle Lyons, who witnessed nearly 300 executions in Texas, US, reveals the desperate acts of death row prisoners who refused to accept their fate After spending years or often decades locked up in a tiny cell for 23 hours a day, most Death Row inmates go willingly to their executions. However, some refuse to die quietly - with officers forced to gas them out of cells, strap up their heads and even give chase across prison grounds. Michelle Lyons, who has witnessed nearly 300 executions in Texas, US, exclusively tells Sun Online how certain inmates "fight like hell" in their last moments. On most occasions, Michelle watched from the witness area, with the killers already on the gurney - the stretcher where they'd be given a lethal injection. Seven prisoners once tried to escape from the Row in Huntsville - with one shoving magazines and newspapers under his clothes to help him roll over razor-wire fences. Others have had to b...

Florida executes Dennis Sochor

Man, 74, becomes oldest inmate executed in Florida in state’s 10th lethal injection this year Florida put to death one of its oldest prisoners in its history on Tuesday, a 74-year-old convicted murderer who was 1 of 3 older inmates scheduled for execution within the span of a month in the nation’s busiest death penalty state. Dennis Sochor was pronounced dead at 6:16 p.m. following a 3-drug injection at Florida State Prison near Starke, the office of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis said. He was convicted of killing a woman on Jan. 1, 1982, just hours after meeting her at a New Year’s Eve party.

Oldest inmate set to be executed in Florida will face strict spending limit for final meal

An entire category of food is also off-limits for final meal requests in Florida Florida is currently preparing to execute its oldest inmate later today (July 14), a 74-year-old convicted murderer who has been on death row since the 1980s—but his final meal will be limited by a strict budget. Dennis Sochor is scheduled to be put to death later today, making history as the oldest inmate to ever be executed in the state. The criminal, who has been on death row for nearly 40 years, will be administered the lethal three-drug injection, with the process due to begin at around 6pm.

Florida to execute William Silvia for 2006 shooting murder of wife

William Silvia, convicted of the 2006 shooting murder of his wife, Patricia, is scheduled to die by lethal injection in August, according to a death warrant filed by Gov. Ron DeSantis on July 17. If all previously scheduled executions go as planned, Silvia will be the 13th person put to death in Florida this year, following a record-breaking 19 executions in 2025. Silvia, now 61, went to his estranged wife's mother's house in Seminole County to attempt to reconcile with her, but first he calmly bought a 12-gauge shotgun and ammunition, prosecutors said. After talking to Patricia Silvia, Silvia got the shotgun from his truck, shot her mother, Betty Woodard, in the face, and fatally shot Patricia in the head, court records show. Woodard, who was standing in front of her daughter, lost her left eye and the top portion of her nose.

Idaho | Death row prisoners sue over state's new firing squad

BOISE (Idaho Statesman) – Days after Idaho made the switch to a firing squad for executions, two Idaho death row prisoners next in line to be put to death sued the state prison system, saying its director withheld information about how she settled on the specifics for carrying out the method. Attorneys for prisoners Thomas Creech and Gerald Pizzuto filed suit this week in state district court against Idaho Department of Correction Director Bree Derrick. In the filing, they called her approval of an updated standard operating procedure for the firing squad and lethal injection as a backup method “arbitrary, capricious, or an abuse of discretion and in excess of the statutory authority of the agency.”

Death Penalty News

Search This Blog