US celebrity Kim Kardashian on Tuesday told a French court she thought she was going to be raped and killed on the night she was robbed of jewellery valued at $6 million while she was in Paris to attend Fashion Week.
Ms Kardashian wiped away tears as she described how she was falling asleep when armed men stormed her room and held her at gunpoint before tying her legs and feet and dumping her in the bathroom.
She later told one of the defendants who had written her an apology letter that she forgave him, but expressed frustration at the description of her assailants as “grandpa robbers.” Most of them are in their 60s and 70s.
“I absolutely did think I was going to die,” Ms Kardashian said, a translator by her side to help her answer questions asked in French by a judge. She was accompanied by her mother Kris Jenner and security guards.
Ms Kardashian was giving evidence at the Paris Justice Palace two weeks into the trial of 10 people suspected of the October 2016 robbery, in what has been described as the biggest single heist in decades in France.
“When this happened, they were obviously a lot younger and stronger,” Ms Kardashian said. “It's maybe a little frustrating that is what they are called today,” she said, in a reference to their nickname as “grandpas.”
One has said they did not know who Ms Kardashian was and were after her $4 million ring given to her by her former husband, the rapper Kanye West. Two of the attackers were led to the room by the hotel's concierge, Abderrahmane Ouatiki, who was being held at gunpoint. They were speaking French, which Ms Kardashian did not understand.
She first thought it was a terrorist attack until one of the men asked in English about her ring, the court was told. He then found it lying on a table by the side of her bed, before a search brought up her jewellery box, which she had not packed because she was planning to carry it with her on the plane the next day as she travelled back to the US. “I heard one of the gentlemen forcefully say 'ring, ring, ring' and he pointed at his hand,” Ms Kardashian said.
'I said a prayer for my family'
With a gun in her back, Ms Kardashian was then pushed into another guest room as the robbers kept searching before they threw her on her bed and started to bind her hands with a zip tie. “I was pretty hysterical,” she said. “I just looked at the concierge and I said to him: 'What's going to happen? Are we going to die? I have babies, please, translate to them, I have babies. I have to make it home.'”
As he was about to tape her mouth, one of two assailants leaned into her and said “shhh, you're OK”, recalled Ms Kardashian, who described the gesture as an attempt to reassure her that she would be fine if she stopped screaming. “I felt he was like a father. He wanted me to know that I would be OK if I just shut up,” she said, referring to the attackers as the “smaller one” and the “bigger one” because their faces were masked.
But she was then seized with terror as they started to argue in French and one pulled her aggressively towards him, exposing her body, while the other held the gun towards her. “I was certain that was the moment he was going to rape me,” Ms Kardashian said. He then tied her legs. “I was certain that was the moment they were going to shoot me and it was over. I said a prayer for my family, my best friend and my sister, that they would have an OK life after seeing what they saw.”
But she was carried instead to the bathroom by one of the men, who dropped her on the floor as if he “had to get out quickly”, Ms Kardashian told the court. After a few minutes, once she was certain they were gone, she rubbed off the tape on the corner of a marble sink before heading downstairs to find her stylist huddled in another bathroom. Simone Harouche had heard the commotion and called Ms Kardashian's sister Kourtney and bodyguard, who rushed back from a nightclub a few minutes later.
'I forgive you'
When the robbers left and Ms Kardashian joined her downstairs, “she was beside herself, I've never seen her like that before”, Ms Harouche told the court. “She just was screaming and kept saying 'we need to get out of here, we need help, what are we going to do if they come back?'”
The robbery was a life-changing experience for Ms Kardashian, who said she cannot sleep at night now without a number of security guards outside her hotel room. She has also stopped posting on social media in real time and does not keep jewellery in her home any more.
In a particularly emotional moment, Ms Kardashian broke down in tears as judge David De Pas read to her a letter of apology written from prison in 2017 by the man suspected of being the gang leader, Aomar Ait Khedache. He admits being involved in the robbery but denies being the ringleader.
“I do appreciate the letter, thank you,” Ms Kardashian, who did not appear to be aware of it before it was read aloud by Mr De Pas, said.
“I'm obviously emotional about this event that changed my life, changed my family's life,” Ms Kardashian added. “Back home in the [United] States, I work in the justice system and I want so badly to be a lawyer … I've always believed in second chances.”
Ms Kardashian has been active in justice reform in the US. In 2023, she paid off the legal fees of more than 50 mothers across the US.
Turning towards Ait Khedache, Ms Kardashian added: “I forgive you for what has taken place. But it doesn't change the emotion, and the feelings and the trauma.”
