It was shortly after 11pm on October 14th when a homeless man discovered the body of a young girl in a plastic trunk in the courtyard of an apartment building complex in north-east Paris. The 12-year-old victim, Lola, was the daughter of the caretakers of the building, who had earlier raised the alarm after she failed to return home that afternoon from her nearby school.
Lola’s father had discovered from CCTV footage that his daughter had entered the building at about 3.15pm on Friday in the company of a woman who was also seen on the video later handling the wheeled trunk, according to a statement by Paris public prosecutor Laure Beccuau.
An autopsy revealed that Lola, whose wounded body was found gagged and bound, had died from asphyxiation, and that she had been raped.
Police rapidly identified and arrested the woman seen on the CCTV footage. She has been named as Dahbia B – her last name was not publicly revealed –, a 24-year-old Algerian whose sister resided in the apartment block. She was placed under investigation for murder, rape and “torture or acts of barbarity”, and imprisoned. Also placed under investigation is a 43-year-old man who had helped Dahbia B. to move the trunk, which he said he did without knowing what it contained, and who has since been bailed.
By all accounts now emerging from the investigation, including her own initial statements and those of her sister, Dahbia B. is markedly mentally disturbed. But what has made this atrocious crime the focus of a political controversy, fanned notably by the far-right, is the fact that the Algerian national was the subject of an expulsion order, handed to her on August 22nd after she was stopped at a French airport and found to have no valid residency permit. She had first arrived in France in 2016 on a student visa, which had since expired.
Under the terms of the expulsion order, called an “obligation de quitter le territoire français”, or OQTF, she had one month to comply.
First on social media, then on TV talk shows and, this week, inside Parliament, the far-right, along with conservative hardliners, accused the government of responsibility in the crime by failing to ensure that expulsion orders are followed up, and what Marine Le Pen, leader of the 89-strong parliamentary group of the Rassemblement National (the renamed former Front National), called “migratory laxity”.
Meanwhile, there has been an unusual amount of reporting on the emerging details of the crime, with some of the reports throwing caution to the wind. Very soon after the discovery of Lola’s body, a criminal affairs commentator speaking live on rolling news channel BFMTV claimed that investigators were considering a “Satanist” link to the murder. “Was this a sort of Satanist murder? It’s too soon to say so,” he said. Meanwhile, French weekly Le JDD even raised the idea that the crime may have been linked to “organ trafficking”.
Lola’s parents (their names have been withheld) this week sought refuge from media and political attention by returning to the village of Fouquereuil, in north-east France, from where they originally came before settling in Paris. “They have switched off their telephone, they aren’t watching television,” the mayor of the village, Gérard Ogiez, told French daily Le Parisien. “They above all don’t want there to be any political hijacking [of the case].”
But that appeal has been in vain. Éric Zemmour, a maverick polemicist and leader of the far-right Reconquête party, a marginalised rival of Le Pen's, declared that the crime “goes beyond the parents, it’s the whole of France that is concerned”. He described Lola’s murder as a “Francocide”, explaining that “it’s a crime perpetrated against a French person by a foreigner”. Les amis d’Éric Zemmour, an association of support for Zemmour, whose unsuccessful presidential bid this year was followed by his party’s failure to win any seats in the following general elections in June, has bought the rights to the web address justicepourlola.fr (justiceforlola), which currently redirects visitors onto another called manifpourlola.fr (demoforlola).
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A hard-right think tank called the Institut pour la justice (Institute for Justice), has called on its supporters to gather this Thursday evening outside the town hall of the 19th arrondissement, the Paris district where Lola lived, in homage to the young girl. Zemmour’s party announced they will attend.
Le Pen’s Rassemblement National (RN) party, some of whose members initially said they would join the gathering, will instead hold its own tribute to Lola at the French lower house, the National Assembly, which RN Member of Parliament Pierre Meurin said would be a “solemn and dignified homage”, while members of the conservative Les Républicains (LR) party also briefly envisaged joining the event, before abandoning the idea.
Fiery exchanges in parliament
In the National Assembly on Tuesday, during the regular session of questions to the government, Marine Le Pen directly addressed Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne. “On Friday, time stood still for a moment for all among us,” she said, referring to the discovery of Lola’s murder. “France was frozen in astonishment, pain and horror at learning of the torture of little Lola. Once again, the suspect of this act of barbarity should not have been present on our territory, and not [present] since more than three years. Once too many. And you cannot evacuate the issue […] One hundred times, madam prime minister, we have called your attention to this migratory laxity, about these obligations to leave the [French] territory of which ninety percent are not carried out. I did so again on July 12th last. To no reply.”
Borne countered with a call for “a bit of decency” and for “respect for the pain of the family, respect for Lola’s pain”, and to let the police and justice system “do [their] work”.
The link between uncontrolled immigration and criminality is obvious.
Le Pen was joined in her attacks on the government on Tuesday by conservative LR party Member of Parliament (MP) Éric Pauget, who accused Borne of responsibility in Lola’s murder. “If decency should have prevented me from asking this question, anger has not dissuaded me from doing so,” he said. “Through the laxity of your policies on immigration, this child was martyrised, raped, murdered by a clandestine, yet who was the subject of an order to leave the [French] territory. […] Lola lost her life because you did not proceed with the expulsion of this [foreign] national who had no business to be here anymore. There is the heavy consequence of your inaction.”
Pauget also pre-empted the possibility that Dahbia B. would be declared unfit to stand trial on psychiatric grounds. “France will not be able to tolerate the irresponsibility of torturers who have only a place on the plane or in prison. The expulsion of foreign delinquents should be obligatory and automatic because, once again, the link between uncontrolled immigration and criminality is obvious.”
French justice minister Éric Dupond-Moretti, explaining that the OQTF expulsion order given to Dahbia B. was for her to voluntarily organise her departure, retorted. “To engage in petit politics […] to use the coffin of a child of 12 years like one might use a stepping stone, is shameful […] Do not add to the most absolute atrocity the disgraceful trade of demagogy,” he said.
However, the French government has itself been playing with fire over the association of immigration and criminality. While interior minister Gérald Darmanin this week denounced “the indecency of people who transform this story into an electoral flyer”, in an interview published in August by French weekly Le JDD, he commented that “it would be idiotic not to say that there is a large part of delinquency which comes from immigrant people”.
“Of course, the foreigner is not by nature a delinquent, but it is obvious that we have a problem of foreign delinquency,” he said, adding: “A foreigner who commits an act of serious delinquency should be very quickly expelled, because he spits on the soil that has welcomed him.”
In October 2019, President Emmanuel Macron gave an interview to far-right weekly Valeurs actuelles, in which he was asked what was his objective for the enforcement numbers of OQTF expulsion orders. “My objective is to remove all those people who have no business being here, […] one hundred percent,” Macron replied.
This week, after Wednesday’s cabinet minister’s meeting, government spokesman Olivier Véran, reacting to the attacks over Lola’s murder, announced that it was working “relentlessly to ensure that the expulsions [ordered be] followed by actions”. He added that the numbers of OQTF expulsion orders that are fulfilled was currently “the maximum level that was seen during the five-year term of president Sarkozy”. With that unfortunate comment he appeared to have fallen directly into the trap of the far-right by associating in turn the atrocious events of Lola’s murder with immigration.
Media commentators join in attacks on the government
Meanwhile, several of the rightwing media have adopted the far-right stance. On TV channel CNews, where Éric Zemmour was a star pundit up until his presidential bid this year, presenter Pascal Praud opened his morning discussion programme “L'heure des pros” with an extraordinary commentary about Lola’s murder. “The death of Lola, 12 years-old, is a mirror of our society – gratuitous barbarity, immigration out of control, a powerless state,” he began. “The death of Lola is perhaps not an event of ill chance, it is no doubt a consequence, the consequence of policies that leave on French soil individuals who have no business to be there.”
Praud then referred to a 2013 non-fiction book by far-right French essayist Laurent Obertone about the supposed breakdown of law and order in France, La France Orange mécanique (a title borrowed from the 1971 film A Clockwork Orange). “La France Orange mécanique is now a reality in this country,” declared Praud. […] No-one has shelter today in France.”
Radio station Europe 1 is, like CNews, owned by French media tycoon Vincent Bolloré, whose outlets have for long served as a platform for the far-right. The head of the station’s political desk is Louis de Raguenel, who joined it from Valeurs actuelles and who was once employed by Nicolas Sarkozy’s long serving chief of staff Claude Guéant, when the latter was interior minister. In his commentary about the murder of Lola, Raguenel attacked the government for its “migratory laxity”, declaring: “If the OQTF [expulsion order] had been carried out, Dahbia B. would not have been in France but in Algeria on Friday October 14th. And Lola would today be alive.”
Another TV channel in Bolloré’s media group is C8, whose popular flagship studio discussion programme “Touche pas à mon poste” is presented by Cyril Hanouna. On air, he joined in the speculation over whether Dahbia B.’s psychological state could, if she is charged, see her declared unfit to stand trial. “For me it would be an absolute tragedy if the psychiatrists pronounce her to be [legally] irresponsible,” Hanouna declared, before asking one of his guests: “Because if she is irresponsible, what will happen?” To the reply that in France “the mad” are not sent for trial, he retorted: “It’s us who are mad.”
While Gérald Darmanin is due within months to present before Parliament an umpteenth proposed change to legislation on immigration, the political climate surrounding the issue this week has rarely been so unsavoury.
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- The original French version of this article can be found here.
English version, with some added reporting, by Graham Tearse