French President Emmanuel Macron said the murder, rape and torture of a 12-year-old girl in Paris earlier this month, for which a 24-year-old Algerian woman has been arrested and placed in preventive detention, was an act of 'extreme evil', while he also praised her family for being 'incredibly dignified and united'.
The shocking sequestration, rape and murder in Paris last week of Lola, a 12-year-old girl whose body was found in a trunk in front of her apartment building home, has been transformed by the far-right and conservative hardliners into a political row over immigration policy after it was revealed that the arrested suspect is a young Algerian woman who since August was the subject of an expulsion order. The controversy snowballed this week, forcing the government onto the defence despite an appeal by Lola’s parents that no political gain should be made of the atrocious crime. Lucie Delaporte and Christophe Gueugneau report.