A French court on Friday sentenced an Algerian woman accused of raping, torturing and murdering a schoolgirl in Paris to life imprisonment without possibility of early release — making her the first woman to receive this maximum punishment.

Dahbia Benkired was found guilty of killing 12-year-old Lola Daviet in the French capital in 2022, in a case that horrified the country and sparked anti-immigration fervour because the woman did not have the right to be in France.

Benkired, now aged 27, was detained after Daviet went missing in the northeast of Paris, her body then found in a trunk in the lobby of the building where her father and mother worked as caretakers.

In the verdict, the presiding judge cited the “extreme cruelty of the criminal acts”, describing them as “true torture”.

“In

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