Frenchwoman in court urges life for Algerian who killed her daughter

The mother of a 12-year-old girl who was raped and murdered in France three years ago in court on Wednesday urged a life sentence for the Algerian woman charged with abusing and killing her.

In a case closely followed by the anti-immigration far right, Dahbia Benkired, now aged 27, was detained after Lola Daviet went missing in the French capital in 2022.

Her brutalised body later turned up in a black box at the bottom of the building where she lived.

After an expert earlier in the day said Benkired showed high "psychopathic tendencies", Delphine Daviet on Wednesday told a Paris court that what happened to her daughter Lola was unimaginable.

"Who could have thought that Lola would one day cross paths with this monster?" she told the court in tears, referring to the defendant.

She has asked the court to "do the necessary" and impose a life sentence.

She said that she and her late husband, who both worked as caretakers in the building where the crime occurred, had raised their children "to share, to respect others".

But "we also warned them about the danger of strangers. We would tell them: 'If someone attacks you, don't hesitate, scream, someone will hear you'."

Her husband started drinking heavily and died after their daughter's death.

Since the trial opened last week, Benkired has provided different motives for why she abused and killed the young girl.

One of them was that Lola's mother did not provide Benkired with a security badge for the elevator when she was staying in the building with her sister.

But Daviet said she had no recollection of this request.

Conservative and far-right politicians in 2022 seized on the killing to call for better immigration law enforcement after investigators found Benkired had overstayed a student visa.

But Daviet at the time urged politicians to stop exploiting her family's suffering.

A psychologist at the trial earlier on Wednesday said he had noted high "psychopathic tendencies" in the defendant, whom he met four times after Lola's death.

The expert added that Benkired appeared to have suffered "mistreatment, physical and sexual violence" during her childhood.

(AFP)