The Paris prosecutor’s office decided on Friday, November 15, that Dahbia Benkired, the main suspect in Lola’s murder, will be tried in court, reports franceinfo. The 12-year-old girl was found dead in a trunk in Paris.
Dahbia Benkired will be well judged at the assizes. This is the decision taken by the Paris prosecutor’s office on Friday November 15, reports franceinfo according to information communicated by the judicial institution. The body of the 12-year-old girl was found in a plastic box in the courtyard of her building in the 19th arrondissement of the capital, on October 14, 2022. Dahbia Benkired is the main suspect in the case.
The accused confessed to the facts at the time
The 26-year-old Algerian, in France since 2016, will be judged 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”. When she was taken into police custody at the time, the woman who had been under an obligation to leave French territory (OQTF) for two months had admitted to having imposed on the teenager “to shower before committing sexual assault and other violence against her leading to death”according to a press release from the prosecutor at the time of the events. According to the autopsy, Lola actually died of asphyxiation.
The facts are said to have taken place on the sixth floor of the building, where Dahbia Benkired lived. It was the latter’s father, caretaker of the building, who found his daughter’s body, a few hours after the mother raised the alarm because her daughter had not returned from school.
A “severe pathological” personality
If the prosecution had to confirm that Dahbia Benkired would be tried at the assizes, it is because the young woman had to undergo several psychiatric assessments to determine her criminal responsibility, recalls Le Parisien. The last one, carried out at the beginning of 2024, confirmed this and qualified the personality of the Algerian as “severe pathological” and associated with “high criminological danger”. She now faces a life sentence.
The judgment of the Paris prosecutor’s office was welcomed by the lawyer for Lola’s family, Me Clotilde Lepetit. According to the latter, this “investigation (…) shows the seriousness of the work which has been devoted to this extraordinary criminal case”. For their part, Dahbia Benkired’s lawyers told AFP they hoped “that the debates necessary for judicial truth will take place calmly, far from the media agitation and the nonsense of social networks”. The placement of the accused under OQTF two months before the facts and the non-execution of this had aroused indignation and very strong criticism from the right of the political spectrum.
