A Parisian investigating judge ordered this Friday a trial against the Algerian Dahbia Benkired for the murder of young Lola, at the end of 2022 in Paris, which had sparked national emotion.
New twist in Lola’s high-profile murder. Implicated in the murder of Lola, Dahbia Benkired will be tried for “the murder of a 15-year-old minor accompanied or preceded by rape, torture or barbaric acts as well as for rape committed against a minor with torture or act of barbarity”, according to information from the Paris prosecutor’s office communicated this Friday.
On Friday October 14, 2022, Lola, who had not returned from college in the afternoon, was found lifeless in a plastic box, in the interior courtyard of the building in the capital, where she lived.
While looking for his daughter, her father, a caretaker of the residence who has since died, saw Lola enter the hall with an unknown woman on video surveillance images.
The latter left the building around 5 p.m., pulling heavy luggage including a plastic trunk.
Dahbia Benkired faces life imprisonment
The Criminal Brigade had arrested Dahbia Benkired on Saturday morning, a young Algerian born in 1998, who entered France legally in 2016 with a student residence permit, under an obligation to leave French territory (OQTF) since two months. The non-execution of this measure had aroused virulent criticism from the right and the far right.
Lawyer for Lola’s family, Me Clotilde Lepetit welcomed on Friday “an instruction which shows the seriousness of the work which has been devoted to this extraordinary criminal case”.
“We hope that the debates necessary for judicial truth will take place calmly, far from the media agitation and the nonsense of social networks,” reacted to AFP Mes Alexandre Silva and Lucile Bertier, lawyers of Dahbia Benkired.
Lola’s body “hidden in the crate”
While in police custody, Dahbia Benkired said she “forced (Editor’s note) on Lola to shower before committing sexual assaults on her and other violence resulting in death. She allegedly hid the body in the box », Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said in a press release at the time.
According to the source close to the case, the final order revealed that Dahbia Benkired did everything to hide her crime. At the end of her indictment, she was incarcerated in particular in the Unit for Difficult Patients (UMD).
According to the prosecution, an initial psychiatric assessment concluded that the accused did not suffer from “any psychological or neuropsychological disorder having abolished or altered his discernment”, even if “on a social level (and not on a psychiatric level), his “dangerousness should attract full attention.”
According to the public prosecutor, two other doctors then concluded that “the existence of manipulative behavior stemming from a pathological personality or a strategy, and not from a major psychiatric pathology”.
Several hundred people, including many college students, took part in a moving white march in tribute to Lola.
An autopsy concluded that she died of asphyxiation
“It is in these difficult times, of extreme violence, that the best rubs shoulders with the worst. The best is you here present, it is solidarity, it is fraternity (…). The worst is the use of our daughter’s image for commercial or political purposes,” the victim’s mother declared to the crowd.
The autopsy revealed that Lola died of asphyxiation. His body showed “multiple other injuries”, particularly in the neck area, but no “traumatic injury to the sexual sphere”.
According to the source close to the case, a dismissal of the case was ordered for a man who transported Dahbia Benkired and for a time welcomed him into his home, although according to this source, the judge notes in his order that he too little questioned about the contents of the box.
