Kim Kardashian has given emotional testimony to a Paris court, telling judges she was convinced she was going to be raped and shot dead when two gunmen burst into the bedroom of her luxury hotel apartment in Paris while the TV star was in bed.
One of the men, who were dressed as police officers, shouted “ring, ring,” pointing to his fingers, before dragging her across the bed, leaving her naked body exposed and using zip ties and tape to secure her wrists and ankles. They then taped her mouth and carried her into the bathroom, where they dumped her on the floor.
Kardashian was in Paris – a city she said she had “always loved” – for fashion week in October 2016 and was staying in a luxury hotel when the robbers attacked after she returned from dinner.
Ten people – nine men and a woman aged between 35 and 78 – are on trial in connection with France’s biggest personal robbery in 20 years. Eight of the accused deny any involvement.
The suspects, nicknamed the “grandpa gang” because of their advanced age, fled with jewellery estimated at $10m (£7.5m) in value, including the 18.88-carat diamond engagement ring Kardashian’s then-husband, rapper Kanye West, gave her, estimated to be worth $4m.
Taking the stand at the Palais de Justice in Paris on Tuesday, Kardashian, 44, was reduced to tears as she was asked to recall the attack.
Kardashian said she was ready to sleep, having packed up everything,g including her pyjamas, ready to fly back to New York the following day. Hearing footsteps on the stairs of the two-storey hotel apartment, she thought it was her sister Kourtney and a friend returning from a nightclub.
Two men dressed as police officers entered the room with the concierge of the building whom they had taken hostage at gunpoint.
“I didn’t understand what was happening. I was just about to fall asleep. I was naked with a robe on, and I pulled it. I heard one of the men saying forcefully ‘ring, ring’ a few times over and pointing at his hand. A lot of terrorist attacks had happened in the world … I thought it was some kind of terrorist attack. I didn’t quite get at first that it was about my jewellery.”
Kardashian said the robbers found her diamond ring but were not satisfied and dragged her into another room where they found her jewellery box.
“One was holding me by my neck and back and one had a gun to my back. I thought: ‘Should I run down the stairs?’ but then I realised they would probably shoot me and that’s when I decided I should just do what they said.
“They threw me on the bed and the smaller one started to tie my hands together with a zip tie. I was pretty hysterical. I looked at the gentleman who was the concierge and said: ‘What is going to happen to us? Are we going to die?’
“I asked him to translate and say to them: ‘I have babies; I have to make it home. They can take everything but I have to make it home to my babies,’ but he just looked at me and said: ‘I don’t know what is going to happen to us.’
“He saw I was hysterical. Then one of the men leaned into me and said: ‘Shhh, and you will be OK.’ Then he put tape around my hands and my mouth.”
She said her robe had fallen open as one of the men pulled her towards him to tie her legs.
“Everything was exposed … I was certain that was the moment he was going to rape me. I said a prayer. Then he closed my legs and ended up tying them. The gun was still pointed at me. I was certain they were going to shoot me and it was all over.
“I said a prayer for my family, my mother and sister and my friends and hoped that they would have an OK life. I knew my sister would be coming home and she would discover the scene … that she would see me tied up and dead on the bed and have that memory in her brain for ever.”
The men disappeared after dropping her on the bathroom floor, where she managed to loosen the ties and make her way to her stylist, Simone Harouche, on the floor below.
Asked about being alone in the hotel without security, Kardashian said she had previously been accustomed to travelling without but now had a team of guards at her home.
“We never felt that we were unsafe before this. This experience changed everything.”
Judge David De Pas said one of the two gunmen in the bedroom, Aomar Aît Khedache, 68, known as “Old Omar”, had written a letter to Kardashian regretting the distress he had caused after seeing the influencer talking about the trauma of the attack.
Kardashian began crying as he read it out: “I do not ask for clemency … I approach you as a human being to say how much I regret what happened.”
Dabbing her eyes with a tissue, she said: “Back home in the States I work in the justice system and once wanted to be a lawyer … I believe in second chances. I have been in prisons with people who have committed horrible crimes and I try to find empathy for them. But I also fight for victims who have been through horrific crimes.
“I appreciate the letter. I forgive you for what took place, but it doesn’t change the emotion, feeling and trauma and the way my life is for ever changed.”
In 2018, during Donald Trump’s first term as US president, he commuted the prison sentence of a woman serving a life sentence for selling drugs, following a lobbying effort by Kardashian that saw the celebrity meet with Trump in the Oval Office.
Kardashian said calling the robbers the “grandpa gang” was “a little frustrating”. “It was almost a decade ago when this happened and they were obviously a lot younger and stronger so it’s maybe a little frustrating that is what they’re called today because it’s definitely not what it felt like,” she said.
Earlier, Kardashian’s fashion stylist and best friend testified that she also feared she would never see her children, then aged two and four, again.
Harouche said Kardashian, whose ankles had been taped, came hopping down the stairs of the two-storey apartment to find her after the gunmen left.
“That’s the kind of person Kim is and I’m the sort of person to hide. She’s the sort of person to take care of someone,” she told the court.
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