Reality TV star Kim Kardashian told a Paris court on Tuesday she feared she would be killed by the masked men who robbed her at gunpoint of some $10 million of jewellery in her hotel room in 2016, but expressed her forgiveness despite the “trauma”.
The trial of 10 suspects has attracted huge media attention, with close to 500 reporters accredited, and crowds flocking around the courthouse on Paris’s historic Ile de la Cite hoping for a glimpse of the celebrity.
“Hi! I’m Kim Kardashian and I just want to thank everyone, especially the French authorities, for allowing me to testify today and tell my truth,” she told the packed court, wearing a black suit.
“I came to Paris for Fashion Week and Paris is always a place I love so much,” Kardashian said, giving the court her account of the night of October 2-3, 2016, when she was robbed while staying at an exclusive, discreet hotel in the centre of the city.
She was in her room — “with my best friend downstairs, my sister and my friend and my mom… all out for the night” — when she heard “stomping” up the stairs.
Then people “who I assumed were police officers because they were in uniform” entered her room, said Kardashian, who is among the world’s most followed people on Instagram and X.
“Then I heard one of the gentlemen say ‘ring’ a few times over, ‘ring’, ‘ring’ and he pointed his finger with an accent,” she said, adding that she didn’t at first “understand it was for my jewellery”.
The man found what he was looking for: a diamond ring given to Kardashian by her then-husband, rapper Kanye West, and valued at 3.5 million euros ($3.9 million).
The attackers then began to look for more valuables, threatened Kardashian with a gun and tied her up with a zip tie, she said, visibly emotional.
“I was certain that he was going to shoot me, so I said a prayer for my family,” she said.
Asked by the presiding judge if she feared she was going to be killed, Kardashian replied: “I absolutely did. I thought I was going to die.”
She said she also feared she would be raped but the man with the gun “closed my legs and put a tape on my leg.”
Kardashian said she was “grabbed and dragged into the other room” but not hit by the men.
Their sudden appearance and the gun were, however, “absolutely terrifying”.
From comments from one of the men, “I felt that he wanted me to know that I would be OK if I just shut up”.
Those on trial are mainly men in their 60s and 70s with previous criminal records.
They have underworld nicknames like “Old Omar” and “Blue Eyes” that resemble those of old-school French bandits of 1960s and 1970s films noirs.
Sixty-eight-year-old Aomar Ait Khedache, known as “Old Omar”, has admitted to tying up Kardashian but denies being the mastermind of the robbery.
Another suspect in the dock, 71-year-old Yunice Abbas, later wrote a book about the heist.
In it he described how his bag got caught in the wheel of his escape vehicle, a bicycle, causing him to fall off and have to scramble to shove the loot back in the bag.
‘I Forgive You’
Khedache, who according to his lawyers is no longer able to speak due to health problems, told Kardashian that he “regrets” his actions in a letter that was read out in court. He said he had been “moved and touched by your tears”.
Kardashian, who appeared tearful during the reading, said: “I do appreciate the letter, for sure” and “I’ve always believed in the second chance.”
She added: “I forgive you for what has taken place but it does not change the emotion, the feelings, the trauma and the way my life changed.”
Kardashian has never viewed her security in the same way since the Paris robbery, she told the court.
“It changed the way that I felt safe at home,” she said, adding she now relied on up to six security guards there.
In what she called a “copycat” burglary, her house in Los Angeles was robbed a month after the Paris heist “because they heard it happened in Paris”.
The US celebrity, sometimes described as being “famous for being famous”, became well known in the early 2000s through TV reality shows, before launching fashion brands and appearing in several films.
The trial is scheduled to run until May 23.
