Paris (AP) – Kim Kardashian Said a silent prayer – for her sister, her best friend, her family – as a masked man drew her in a Parisian hotel room during the robbery of 2016 jewelry that changed his life. She wore a robe. His hands were attached to Zip. His mouth was recorded. She thought she would not survive.
“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.”
She said she was preparing for the bed when she heard the stairs trampled. At first, she thought it was Her sister Kourtney And a friend returning drunk with an evening at Paris fashion week.
In this artist’s sketch, Kim Kardashian testifies concerning a flight of millions of dollars in jewelry in her Paris hotel room in 2016, in Paris, Tuesday May 13, 2025. (AP photo / Valentin Pasquier)
“Good morning? Good morning? Who is it?” She called. Then the masked men stormed the play.
She caught her phone but did not know the French emergency number. She tried to call her sister and her bodyguard, but a man stopped her. The men threw her on the bed, tied her hands and pressed her a pistol.
AP Audio: Kim Kardashian testifies to being linked and held under the threat of a weapon during the flight of Paris
The AP correspondent, Ed Donahue, reports on the emotional testimony of Kim Kardashian.
“I have babies,” said Kardashian, according to his testimony. “I have to go home. They can take everything. I just have to go home. “
She was transported to the bathroom. A man stuck his mouth. She was told that she would be fine if she remained silent.
The last time Kardashian saw the men who, according to the police, stole her, she was locked in the marble bathroom while masked attackers stole more than $ 6 million in jewelry. On Tuesday, almost a decade later, she faced them again – this time, from the witness bar.
His testimony marked the emotional highlight of an essay that seized France and Debates revived on the cost of fame And what it means to live in public.
Kim Kardashian, center, arrives to testify concerning a flight of millions of dollars in jewelry from his Paris hotel room in 2016, in Paris, Tuesday May 13, 2025.
Follow digital breadcrumbs
At the time of the flight, Kardashian was one of the most recognized women on the planet. A fashion icon. A star of reality. A billionaire business tycoon. She had mastered a new type of celebrity – a distribution in real time, post by post, to millions of followers.
But in the early hours of October 3, 2016, this visibility became a weapon against it. The flight marked a turning point for Kardashian, and for the way the world understood vulnerability to the digital age.
Investigators believe that the attackers followed Kardashian’s digital breadcrumbs – images, horodatages, geotags – and exploited them with old -fashioned criminal methods.
Dressed in black with provocative sparkling diamonds, Kardashian was held on Tuesday of her mother, Kris Jenner, in the highly secure courtroom. His voice was shaking by thanking the French authorities for “allowing me to share my truth”.
She described how the attackers arrived at her hotel disguised as police, sliding the concierge upstairs to the handcuffs. “I thought it was a kind of terrorist attack,” she said.
An attacker asked for his diamond return worth $ 4 million on the bedside table. “He said:” Ronnerie! Ring! “And he showed his hand,” she recalls.
French prosecutors say that the attackers – most of them in the sixties and the 1970s – were part of a experienced criminal cycle. Two accused admitted to be on the scene. It is claimed that he did not know who she was.
Twelve suspects were originally charged. One has died since. Another has been apologized due to an illness. The French press nicknamed them the robberies – “The thieves of grandfather” – but the prosecutors insist that they were not harmless retirees.
They are faced with accusations, including an armed robbery, a kidnapping and members in a criminal gang, offenses that have the perpetuity imprisonment.
Kim Kardashian, in the center on the left, accompanied by his mother Kris Jenner, center on the right, leaves the palace of the judge after having testified, concerning a flight of millions of dollars in jewelry in his Paris hotel room in 2016, in Paris, Tuesday May 13, 2025. (Photo AP / Aurelen Marssard)
“Take everything. I need to live ‘
After the men fled, Kardashian rubbed the adhesive tape against the bathroom sink to release his hands. She jumped down, always linked, to find her friend and stylist, Simone Harouche. Fearing that the thieves will come back, they went to the balcony and hid in bushes. Lying there, Kardashian called 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.
Harouche locked himself up in a bathroom and sent a text to the sister and Kardashian bodyguard: “Something is not going well.”
She described how her friend was “next to her … She was just crying”.
J. David de Pas asked if Kardashian had made a target by publishing images of herself with “great jewelry”. Harouche rejected the premise. “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.”
After the flight, criticism criticized Kardashian for having displayed his wealth, including designer Karl Lagerfeld who told the Associated Press She was “too public” with her jewelry. But as the details of the robbery emerged, public opinion became sympathetic.
The robbery triggered a cultural change, encouraging publicists and managers to exhort customers to delay publications on social networks, to remove location labels and to think twice before flashing luxury online. However, Kardashian’s own image, according to some, continues to complicate this story. As she testified on Tuesday on her trauma, journalists received a press release praising her appearance of Paris courthouse: “Kim Kardashian Stuns … carrying a diamond necklace with a show of 1.5 million dollars of Samer Halimeh New York, with 80 impeccable diamonds.” It seems that visibility remains currency.
She told court that her house in Los Angeles was stolen shortly after in what seemed to be a copy attack. Without security agents, she said, “I can’t even sleep at night.” She now keeps between four and six guards at home.
“I started getting this phobia to go out,” said Kardashian. “This experience has really changed everything for us.”
At the time of the 2016 flight, she said, her bodyguard stayed in a separate hotel: “We assumed that if we were in a hotel, it was safe, it was safe.”
She said that Paris had formerly been a sanctuary, a place where she was walking at 3 or 4 in the morning, making window weighing, sometimes stopping for hot chocolate. It “always felt really safe,” she said. “It was always a magical place.”
Kardashian, who studies to become a lawyer herself, said that she was grateful for the opportunity to “tell my truth” in the Paris courtroom.
“It’s my closure,” she said. “It’s me I put that, let’s hope it, to rest.”
Kim Kardashian, center, climbed the steps of the Palais de la Justice upon his arrival to testify concerning a flight of millions of dollars in jewelry in his Paris hotel room in 2016, in Paris, Tuesday May 13, 2025. (AP photo / Aurelien Morissard)
