PARIS: French authorities have arrested a 24-year-old woman on suspicion of killing a 12-year-old girl whose body, covered in cuts and bruises, was found in a plastic trunk outside her home in Paris, in a case that has shocked the country.
The murder of the girl, named Lola, quickly became a source of political tension as well, with opposition parties seizing on the profile of the suspect — an illegal immigrant — to call for tougher immigration policies.
The Paris prosecutor’s office said the girl disappeared on Friday afternoon and her body was discovered later that evening by a homeless man outside her building in the 19th arrondissement of the French capital.
She died asphyxiated, prosecutors said in a statement.
The main suspect was seen on CCTV exiting the building in the afternoon, carrying heavy luggage, including the trunk in which the victim was found.
She was arrested on Monday and put under formal investigation on accusations of murder, rape and acts of torture, a judicial source said on Tuesday.
Shocked neighbors laid flowers and candles in tribute to the girl.
“It’s unbearable,” said a neighbor who declined to give her name. “We’ve been living in this neighborhood for years and we’ve just come here to give support to the family, in leaving a bouquet, because like many people, this breaks our hearts.”
Another neighbor said: “Twelve years old... poor girl ... it doesn’t make any sense.”
French President Emmanuel Macron met with the girl’s parents.
“He offered them his condolences and assured them of all his solidarity and support in the ordeal they are going through and which upsets us all,” his office said.
As authorities confirmed reports that the suspect was an illegal immigrant, the far-right and some in the conservatives’ ranks said this showed failings in the government’s law and order policies.
“This murder should not have happened. The assassin should not have been in France,” Olivier Marleix, president of the conservative Les Republicains group in the National Assembly, told Reuters. “There is a very deep emotion in our country.”
“Too many crimes are being committed by clandestine immigrants one has not been able or willing to deport,” French far-right leader Marine Le Pen said in parliament. Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne asked her to “show some decency.”
Lawyer Alexandre Silva, representing the suspect, told BFM TV that he could not comment on the case.
Newspapers, citing police and judicial sources, said the suspect was Algerian.
Woman arrested on suspicion of killing 12-year-old girl in Paris
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Woman arrested on suspicion of killing 12-year-old girl in Paris
- The murder of the girl quickly became a source of political tension as well
- Opposition parties seized on the profile of the suspect — an illegal immigrant — to call for tougher immigration policies
Crime, immigration dominate as Chile votes for president
- Chileans are also choosing members of the Chamber of Deputies and Senate
- A sharp increase in violent crime has sown terror in one of Latin America’s safest nations
SANTIAGO: Chileans stood in long lines on Sunday to vote in general elections dominated by far-right calls for an iron fist on crime and mass migrant deportations.
Pre-election polls showed the main left-wing candidate, Jeannette Jara, a 51-year-old communist running on behalf of a broad coalition, winning the first round of voting for president.
But far-right leader Jose Antonio Kast is tipped to prevail in December’s run-off with Donald Trump-style plans to expel all illegal migrants.
Chileans are also choosing members of the Chamber of Deputies and Senate in the first general elections with compulsory voting since 2012.
Results are expected within two hours of polls closing at 4:00 p.m. (1900 GMT).
A sharp increase in murders, kidnappings and extortion over the past decade has sown terror in what is still one of Latin America’s safest nations.
- Shot for a gold chain -
“Just a few steps from my house, a young boy was recently killed because he was wearing a gold chain; he was shot. And three years ago, on my street, a young girl was almost kidnapped,” Rosario Isidora Herrera Munoz, who voted in Santiago with her six-month-old baby, told AFP.
“I hope that some day we’ll go back to the way we were before,” said Mario Faundez, an 87-year-old retired salesman.
“If we have to kill (criminals), so be it,” he added.
Jara on Sunday accused her rivals of “exacerbating fear” and spreading “hate,” and said their proposals did not amount to a full plan for governing.
The vote is seen as a litmus test for South America’s left, which has been sent packing in Argentina and Bolivia, and faces a stiff challenge in Colombian and Brazilian elections next year.
Jara served as labor minister under outgoing center-left president Gabriel Boric, who cannot run for a second consecutive term.
Ultra-right candidate Johannes Kaiser, who was closing in on Jara and Kast in the final days of campaigning, told AFP the election was about ending Latin America’s “disconnection...from the United States and the free world.”
- Walls, fences, trenches -
Despite a declining murder rate, Chileans remain transfixed by the growing violence of criminals, which they blame on the arrival of gangs from Venezuela and elsewhere.
Kast has vowed to build walls, fences and trenches along Chile’s border with Bolivia to keep out newcomers from poorer countries to the north, such as Venezuela.
Maite Sanchez, a 34-year-old Cuban living legally in Chile, expressed dismay on Sunday over the demonization of migrants “who did things properly, arrived with the right paperwork...and are contributing to the country.
Former YouTube polemicist Kaiser, a fan of Argentina’s Javier Milei, is the most radical of the candidates.
The 49-year-old libertarian MP energized youth voters with rock-themed rallies and blunt language about crime, immigration and the left.
Conservative ex-minister Evelyn Matthei, the 72-year-old establishment choice, struggled to make her mark on the campaign.
- Uphill battle -
Jara faces an uphill battle to overcome strong anti-communist and anti-incumbent sentiment.
Boric defeated Kast in 2021 on a promise to establish a welfare state after mass demonstrations in 2019 over inequality.
But his presidency was fatally weakened after voters massively rejected a progressive new constitution that he had backed.
Jara campaigned as a moderate with a track record of social reforms — she lowered the working week from 45 hours to 40 and raised the minimum wage — and vowing to ensure “every Chilean family can easily make it to the end of the month.”
Patricia Orellana, a 56-year-old Jara voter, said she feared a rollback in women’s rights if Kast or Kaiser, both of whom oppose abortion, won.
Kast, if elected, would be the first far-right leader since the 1973-1990 military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.
The son of a German soldier in Hitler’s Nazi army, Kast has defended Pinochet, who overthrew a democratically elected socialist president in 1973 and oversaw a regime that killed thousands of dissidents.
