Kim Kardashian appeared in a French court room Tuesday morning, May 13, to recount the harrowing armed robbery she endured at a hotel in Paris in 2016: “I absolutely did think I was going to die,” she testified, according to the BBC.
Kardashian was robbed at gunpoint on Oct. 3, 2016, with the alleged crooks taking over $6 million in jewelry. Now, French authorities have charged 10 people, nine men and one woman, in connection with the robbery, with prosecutors alleging that the crew was part of a seasoned criminal gang. (Many of the suspects are in their 60s and 70s, leading the French press to give them the nickname “les papys braqueurs,” which translates to “the grandpa robbers.”)
While on the stand, Kardashian testified that when she first heard the footsteps of the robbers climbing up the stairs of the hotel room, she thought it was her sister, Kourtney, and a friend returning from a night out. Eventually, the door to her room was flung open, with Kardashian saying two men came in “dressed as police officers.” She said they had with them the hotel’s night receptionist, who was handcuffed.
When they first entered, Kardashian said, the robbers kept asking about a ring, ostensibly referring to an approximately $4 million diamond given to her by then-husband Kanye West. But Kardashian said she was “in such shock” that she thought it might be a terrorist attack.
“Honestly, a lot of terrorist attacks were going on in the world, and me and my friends were talking about what was going on in the world,” Kardashian said. “I didn’t get what was happening and I didn’t get it was about my jewelry, even though they specifically asked for my ring.”
Eventually, Kardashian said, one robber found the ring next to her bed, while another discovered a jewelry box while rifling through her stuff. When Kardashian tried to grab her phone to alert her bodyguard, she said someone grabbed her phone, then pulled her off the bed, and took her down the hallway as they searched for more jewelry. She said one men held a gun to her back and she thought about running before realizing she should “just do whatever they say.”
According to Kardashian, the robbers ultimately threw her back on the bed and tied her hands with zip ties. She remembered telling the night receptionist to “please translate to [the robbers] that I have babies, I have to make it home.”
All the while, Kardashian said, she was wearing just a bathrobe, and she remembered thinking this would be “the moment he rapes me.” The man, however, tied her feet together, taped her mouth, and locked her in the bathroom.
After a few minutes, Kardashian said, the noise in the other room stopped, and she began to free herself. She was able to remove the zip ties from her wrist and the tape from her mouth, then left the bathroom in search for her stylist, Simone Harouche, who’d been sleeping downstairs and had locked herself in a bathroom during the robbery. Harouche helped Kardashian remove the ties on her feet.
Near the end of her testimony, Kardashian spoke about the long-term effects of the robbery, saying she developed a “phobia of going out,” lest people “see me out and know my home was empty.” She added, “I can’t even sleep at night if I know there’s not multiple security [guards],” she added.
Kardashian even addressed one of the defendants, Aomar Ait Khedache, who admitted to taking part in the robbery and sent Kardashian a letter after his arrest in 2017. “I do appreciate the letter for sure,” she said. “I do appreciate it. I forgive you. But it doesn’t change the emotion, the feelings and the trauma and the way my life has changed.”
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