A 12-year-old’s terrible death horrifies France and gets weaponized by the far right

It’s 7pm on Thursday, October 20, and it’s already dark outside. A few hundred people have gathered at Denfert-Rochereau square in Paris. They have been convened by an organization called the Institute for Justice. A giant screen broadcasts testimonies of parents of children and young people who have been murdered in recent years in France.

“Laxity kills,” reads a placard at the concentration. Among those who have urged citizens to mobilize is one of the leading figures of the new French far right, Éric Zemmour, the failed candidate for the presidency of France in the spring of 2022. Joining Zemmour is Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, the wayward niece of Marine Le Pen, head of the far-right parliamentary group National Rally (formerly the National Front). The latter did not attend: this was too much even for her, as she seeks the respectability that will finally lead her to power after three failed presidential runs.

The protest has been portrayed as a tribute to Lola, a 12-year-old girl who was raped, tortured and murdered on October 14 inside the building where she lived with her parents, in the 19th district of Paris. Her body was found that same night in the courtyard of the building, inside a trunk.

Hours later, the police arrested the suspect, identified in the French press as Dahbia B, a 24-year-old woman born in Algeria and living in France since 2016. Her student visa had expired, and she was subject to the obligation to leave French territory.

It did not take long for the far right – including, in this case, Marine Le Pen – to more or less directly blame the government and President Emmanuel Macron for his alleged laxity with immigration. Zemmour has even applied a newly coined term to Lola’s murder: Francocide, meaning the murder of a French citizen out of the mere fact of being French, although nothing indicates that this was the case here.

“It could have happened to anyone”

The neighborhood at the foot of Buttes-Chaumont, a park on a hill in the northeast of Paris, is one of those corners of the city that still retains the popular flavor of a capital in full gentrification mode. The local residents are a mix of North Africans, Orthodox Jews and old Spanish immigrants.

Lola and her parents, who worked as janitors in the 12-story building at 119 rue Manin, were originally from northern France. Every afternoon, Lola would walk home from Georges Brassens school, located just 350 meters from her house.

“This is like a small town, we all know each other and we get along,” says Awa, a 32-year-old neighbor. Her daughter goes to the same school as Lola. “It could have happened to anyone’s daughter,” she sighs.

That Friday, Lola finished classes at 3pm. Fifteen minutes later, security cameras recorded the scene at the entrance of the building: Dahbia, whose sister lived there, approached Lola. It is not known how the woman convinced the girl to go up to her sister’s apartment on the sixth floor.

What must have happened there has been reconstructed, on the basis of media leaks of Dahbia’s confused statement to the police during interrogations. The woman forced the girl to undress. She abused her. She bound her hands and feet and covered her face with tape. She strangled her and stabbed her, then placed the body in a trunk. At 5pm she went downstairs with the trunk and two suitcases.

“She was unable to take her suitcases out on her own!” says Sarafina, a Spanish immigrant who arrived in France in the 1970s and, retired after a lifetime of precarious jobs, now lives in the neighborhood. Like other locals, she has come up with a theory: there must have been an accomplice. The fact is that Dahbia was looking for someone to help her move her luggage to the outskirts of Paris. A friend took her and her suitcases to the outskirts of the capital. Later she returned to the scene of the crime, where she left the trunk before returning to the outskirts of the city. At 11.15pm, a homeless person discovered the body in the inner courtyard of the building.

At dawn on Saturday, October 15, Dahbia was arrested and charged with murder, torture, rape and other barbaric acts against a minor. The suspect has offered contradictory versions of events. Media reports have alternately suggested that she has severe mental problems, but also that she wanted revenge for a dispute she had with Lola’s mother.

“She’s not crazy!” exclaims Sarafina, the Spanish neighbor. “We live in a permanent state of insecurity,” adds Claire-Amélie, a 47-year-old salesperson. “There are many homeless people here: some are harmless, there are also migrants who have not found accommodation, drug addicts and mental patients that nobody takes care of,” complains Véronique, a 52-year-old teacher.

Displays of pain and solidarity have multiplied across the country. Lola’s parents, who buried their child on Monday in Lillers, in the northern region of Pas-de-Calais, have repeatedly asked that their daughter not be used for political purposes. But not everyone has paid attention.

“The most shocking thing is that this dramatic event could have been avoided,” says Jean Messiha, a former Le Pen and Zemmour collaborator, on the terrace of a café in Denfert-Rochereau following Thursday’s rally. “If the state had done its job and exercised its responsibility, this person would have been expelled from France and Lola would still be here.”

President Macron, who received Lola’s parents at the Élysée on Tuesday, declared: “I think above all of Lola’s parents, her brother and her stepbrother, of the blow to this incredibly dignified and united family at this time, and I think that above all, they need the respect and affection of the nation.”