Two years after the murder of Lola in Paris, an instruction which finds a judicial translation. Dahbia Benkired will be judged at the assizes for “the murder of a minor aged 15 accompanied or preceded by rape, torture or barbaric acts, to the detriment of young Lola, as well as for rape committed on a minor with torture or barbaric acts”, AFP learned from the prosecution on Friday November 15. Dahbia Benkired, who was subject to an obligation to leave the territory at the time of the events, faces life imprisonment.
Lawyer for Lola’s family, Me Clotilde Lepetit greeted “an instruction which shows the seriousness and the work which has been devoted to this extraordinary criminal case”. Lola's mother “Madame Daviet wanted the highest level of legal debate to be held so that the terrible crimes committed against her daughter could be judged. We will have it”. “We hope that the debates necessary for judicial truth will take place peacefully, far from the media agitation and the nonsense of social networks”, reacted to AFP Mes Alexandre Silva and Lucile Bertier, the defense lawyers.
Sexual attacks and multiple lesions
Late in the evening of 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, caretaker of the residence, had seen on video surveillance images Lola entering the hall around 3:15 p.m. with a woman he did not know. The latter, who had joined her sister who lived in the building, left the residence around 5 p.m., pulling heavy luggage including a plastic trunk.
The criminal brigade of the Parisian judicial police had arrested the suspect, Dahbia Benkired, on Saturday morning in Bois-Colombes (Hauts-de-Seine), a young Algerian born in 1998, who entered France legally in 2016 with a residence permit. 'student. In police custody, she said she had “imposed [à Lola] to shower before committing sexual assaults and other violence against her that resulted in death. She would have hidden the body in the crate. Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau reported at the time in a press release. The autopsy revealed that Lola died of asphyxiation. His body showed “multiple other lesions”, especially at the neck, but not “of traumatic injury to the sexual sphere”.
Faced with the violence of the events and the inconsistency of the suspect's comments, the latter was the subject of a psychiatric assessment. The examination had not noted “no psychic or neuropsychological disorder having abolished or altered his discernment” even if, “on a social level (and not on a psychiatric level), its dangerousness should attract full attention”. In its referral order, the prosecution reports that two other doctors then concluded that “the existence of manipulative behavior resulting from a pathological personality or a strategy, and not from a major psychiatric pathology”.
Political recovery
The fact that it was still present in France had aroused virulent criticism on the right and the extreme right, Eric Zemmour running the show with the term “francocide”, when the then senator LR Bruno Retailleau tabled a proposal for law to punish “non-assistance to French people in danger”. The government in return castigated “indecency” of this “political recovery”. “Using the coffin of a 12-year-old girl like you would use a stepping stool is a shame,” thundered Eric Dupond-Moretti. Gérald Darmanin, then Minister of the Interior, commented: “She arrived regularly as a student in the national territory. It has barely been a month since she was required to leave the country. [en réalité, près de deux, ndlr]so things were done in conditions which are unfortunately not predictable, especially since this person is probably herself known as a victim of domestic violence.”
Several hundred people, including many middle school students, took part in a moving white march in tribute to Lola, during which her mother spoke: “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.”
Lola's father, “devastated” by tragedy, died at the beginning of 2024. February. “Johan Daviet had his head and heart too close to hell since the acts committed against his daughter. He was tumbling. His heart attack is the epilogue of this descent into hell. commented her lawyer, who still represents Lola's mother.
