An Algerian woman went on trial in France Friday accused of raping, torturing and murdering a 12-year-old girl in Paris in a case that horrified the country.
Dahbia Benkired, now aged 27, was detained after Lola Daviet went missing in the northeast of the capital three years ago, and her body was then found in a trunk in the lobby of the building where her father and mother worked as caretakers.
Conservative and far-right politicians seized on the case to call for better immigration law enforcement, after Benkired was found to have overstayed a student visa and failed to comply with a notice to leave France.
But the victim’s mother urged politicians to stop exploiting her daughter’s death.
The girl’s family sat in court on Friday, wearing T-shirts with the words: “You were the sun of our life, you will be the star of our nights.” One woman in her fifties broke down in tears when the defendant entered the dock.
Building residents saw Benkired in the lobby of the apartment block in the 19th district on October 14, 2022, carrying suitcases and a heavy trunk covered in a blanket, the investigation showed.
An hour and a half earlier, security footage showed Benkired approaching the girl as she returned from school, then leading her into the flat her sister occupied in the building.
Investigators say Benkired raped and hit the schoolgirl with scissors and a box cutter, then bound her up in duct tape, including around her face, leading to her death by asphyxia.
She placed the body in a trunk and exited the building, pausing outside a cafe, where she told a client who suspected something strange in her luggage that she was “selling a kidney”, investigators said.
She then convinced a friend to drive her and the bags to his home, before taking a taxi with the trunk back to the building where her sister lived. She fled when she saw police deployed in the area, but was arrested the next day.
Benkired had a tough upbringing with aunts before she settled in France in 2013, the investigation showed.
She told investigators she had been angry with the girl’s mother, who had refused to give her a badge to get through the apartment block’s front door, after her sister had given her a key to her flat.
The probe showed she had conducted searches online into witchcraft days before the murder.
Benkired, whose trial is to last until next Friday, faces a maximum sentence of life in jail.
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