The billionaire entrepreneur and star of reality TV, Kim Kardashian, testified Tuesday in a palace of court in Paris crowded in the trial of suspects accused of having stolen it under the threat of a weapon, to record their mouth, to link his hands and to steal millions of dollars in jewelry 9 years ago.
Kardashian, 44, told the jury that she thought she was going to be sexually assaulted during the 2016 robbery and that she was sure that she would not survive the test.
“I was sure it was the moment when he was going to rape me,” she told a Paris court on Tuesday. “I absolutely thought I was going to die.”
Kim Kardashian arrived at the courthouse on May 13, 2025 in Paris, in France.
Edward Berthelot / Getty Images
Kim Kardashian remembers the incident
Kardashian, who was sometimes in tears, said that she was preparing for the bed when she heard noisy steps getting on the stairs in her hotel room, saying in court that at the beginning, she thought it was her sister Kourtney and a friend who came back from a Paris fashion week in the early hours of October 3.
She remembers called to ask who was there before masked men were born in the room.
“I was obviously very confused. I had to understand what was going on. I was about to fall asleep, naked with a dress,” she said in court.
“Honestly, many terrorist attacks happened in the world, and I thought it was a kind of terrorist attack, and I did not immediately understand that it was for my jewelry.”
She said that the suspects arrived at her hotel disguised as police and held the concierge hostage. He was dragged in his room, handcuffed, according to Kardashian.
An attacker started to make a gesture towards his diamond ring.
“He said:” Ronnerie! Ring! “And he showed his hand,” she recalls.
Kardashian caught his phone to call the police, but did not know the French emergency number. She then tried to contact her sister and her bodyguard, but was arrested by one of the masked attackers.
Kim Kardashian arrived at the courthouse on May 13, 2025 in Paris, in France.
Edward Berthelot / Getty Images
The men then threw him on the bed, attached themselves to Zip and held a weapon on his head, she said.
“I have babies,” said Kardashian. “I have to go home. They can take everything. I just have to go home. “
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At that time, Kardashian said that she remembers that he worried about what her sister Kourtney could have returned home.
“I thought of my sister, I thought she would enter and see me die and have this memory in her forever,” said Kardashian.
The men then dragged her to the toilet, she said, where they stuck her mouth and told her that she would not be injured as long as she made no noise.
She remembers having been manipulated aggressively by the suspects, but said that they had not struck her.
“I was not struck. No, I was caught and I dragged into the other room and thrown on the floor, but I was not struck, no,” she said in court.
“”[The gun] Was pointed out to me to get a piece in room, and it was pointed out to me on the bed at the end. »»
The last time Kardashian saw the men who, according to the police, stole her, was locked in the bathroom while the suspects stole more than $ 6 million in jewelry.
His testimony has marked a long -awaited moment in a trial that has captivated France and the broader world for almost a decade, and has rekindled discussions on the price of fame as well as the risks of living in the eyes of the public.
Kardashian is one of the most recognizable figures on the planet, an entrepreneur of a billionaire fashion and beauty, an icon of reality TV, a producer and a lawyer in the making, with a series of more than 350 million on Instagram.
But the flight has highlighted the dark sides of excessive exposure, and how fame can leave very publicized figures vulnerable to attacks like the one it has survived.
Police believe that the suspects have watched Kardashian’s social media profiles to build a wider image of her movements and used images she had shared with horodatages and geotags to follow her place in incident’s accounts.
Kardashian was joined by her mother, Kris Jenner, in the strongly guarded Parisian courtroom. Dressed in black with 1.5 million dollars in diamonds draped around his neck – according to a press release sent by his team to journalists during the trial, reports the Associated Press – her voice trembled as she thanked the French authorities for allowing him to “tell my truth”.
This Court sketch made on May 13, 2025, in Paris, shows the American celebrity Kim Kardashian (R2), alongside the co-accused Aomar Ait Khedache (R), testifying to the Assisi court for the 2016 flight trial which saw its shutter of millions of dollars of jewelry.
Images Benoit Peyrucq / Getty
The accused and the consequences
French prosecutors say that the 12 suspects, which are between 60 and 70 years old, were members of an old -fashioned criminal cycle.
Two attackers admitted to being on the scene of the crime, and it is claimed that he did not know who Kardashian was when the crime took place; Another died before the trial and a fourth was apologized as a result of an illness.
The group of criminals has been nicknamed “the robberies’ papys” – “grandfather thieves” – by the French press, but the lawyers of Kardashian insist that men are far from being a healthy group of seniors.
The suspects face charges of armed robbery, kidnapping and members of a criminal gang, crimes in France who bear the possibility of life in prison.
After the men left, Kardashian said that she was rubbing the band binding her wrists against the bathroom sink to release her hands.
Her ankles always attached, she jumped down to find her friend and stylist, Simone Harouche, who stayed in the room below.
Fearing that the thieves could come back, Harouche and Kardashian fled to the balcony and hid in the bushes. During his stay, Kardashian phoned his mother.
Earlier in the trial, Harouche remembers hearing Kardashian Scream upstairs: “” I need to live “. This is what she continued to say: “Take everything.
Meanwhile, Harouche locked himself in a bathroom and sent a text to the sister and the bodyguard of Kardashian, writing: “Something is not going”.
Later, she heard Kardashian struggled on the stairs, her ankles still linked.
“She was out of her,” said Harouche. “She was just crying.”
J. David de Pas asked Harouche if she thought Kardashian invited thieves by sharing images of her on the Internet decorated with expensive jewelry – a Harouche questioning line has greatly rejected.
Kim Kardashian leaves the courthouse after testifying to the Assisi court for the trial during the 2016 flight which saw him relieved of millions of dollars of jewelry under the threat of a firearm in Paris on May 13, 2025.
Alain Jocard / Getty Images
“Just because a woman wears jewelry, it doesn’t make her a target,” she said. “That’s like saying this because a woman wears a short skirt that she deserves to be raped.”
Kardashian told court that shortly after the flight of Paris, his house in Los Angeles had been robbed in what she believes to be a copy attack, adding that she can no longer sleep without guards and has between four and six at home at any time.
“I started getting this phobia to go out,” said Kardashian. “This experience has really changed everything for us.”
At the time of the flight of Paris, his bodyguard stayed in another hotel.
“We assumed that if we were in a hotel, it was certain, it was certain,” said Kardashian, adding that Paris, until then, had always felt safe with her and that she often walked in the streets alone at the early hours of the morning to make windows or stop for solo hot chocolate.
“It was always really safe,” she said. “It was always a magical place.”
Kardashian received a letter of apologies from one of the suspects and said that she was grateful to the gesture.
“I appreciate the letter, that’s for sure. I forgive you for what happened, but that does not change feelings and trauma and the fact that my life was changed forever, but I appreciate the letter, thank you, “she concluded.
– with files from the Associated Press and Reuters
