Kim Kardashian acts when she arrives on Tuesday to testify concerning a flight of millions of dollars in jewelry in her Paris hotel room in 2016.
Aurelen Morissard / AP
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Aurelen Morissard / AP
Defiant in diamonds, Kim Kardashian appeared on Tuesday in a Paris courtroom to testify during the 2016 armed robbery trial which turned his life upside down. The star of reality and the business magnate have given emotional testimonies, sometimes painful, on masked night men attached him under the threat of a weapon and stole more than $ 6 million in jewelry.
Here’s what she revealed – and what’s yet to come.
A night that has changed everything
Kardashian said that she was starting to have fun in bed in the early hours when she heard the stairs. She supposed that it was her sister Kourtney who came back from an evening. “Hello? Hello? Who is it?” She called.
A few moments later, two masked men burst out. They dragged the concierge in the handcuffs. They were dressed in police.
“I thought it was a kind of terrorist attack,” she said.
She caught her phone but frozen – “I didn’t know what 911 (in France) was.” She tried to call her sister and bodyguard, but a man caught her hand to stop her. They threw him on the bed, linked his hands and held a pistol towards his back.
“I have babies,” she recalls saying to thieves. “I have to go home. They can take everything. I just have to go home.”
Her dress opened – She said she was naked below – while a man pulled her towards him. “I was sure it was the moment when he was going to rape me,” said Kardashian.
An attacker leaned and told her that in English, she would be fine if she was silent. He stuck his mouth and took her to the toilet.
Kardashian then managed to release his hands by rubbing the adhesive tape against the bathroom sink. She jumped down, the ankles always linked and found her friend and stylist, Simone Harouche. Fearing that men will come back, women climbed on the balcony and hid in bushes. Lying there, Kardashian called his mother.
The men took a diamond ring that she wore that night in a Givenchy show and crossed her jewelry box. They took articles, including a watch that her late father had given her when she obtained her graduate of high school. “It was not only jewelry. It was so many memories,” she said.
A life changed and a constant fear
Investigators believe that the attackers followed Kardashian’s digital breadcrumbs – images, horodatages, geotags – and exploited them with old -fashioned criminal methods.
The flight has reshaped Kardashian’s feeling of security and freedom. “This experience has really changed everything for us,” she said. “I started getting this phobia to go out.”
She often rents adjacent hotel rooms for protection and no longer stores jewelry at home, and now has up to six security guards at home.
“I can’t even sleep at night,” she said.
She also said that she no longer made publications on social networks in real time unless a public event. Her house in Los Angeles was stolen shortly after the burglary of Paris in what she believes to be a copy attack.
In this artist’s sketch, Kim Kardashian testifies Tuesday concerning a flight of millions of dollars in jewelry from her Paris hotel room in 2016, in Paris.
Valentin Pasquier / AP
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Valentin Pasquier / AP
A letter and an unexpected moment of grace
In a powerful courtroom, the chief judge read a letter from one of the accused aloud, who is too sick to testify. The letter said he had seen Kardashian tears on television and had expressed his regret. Kardashian was visibly moved.
“I am obviously emotional,” she said in response.
“I appreciate the letter, that’s for sure,” she added. “I forgive you for what happened. But that does not change emotion, trauma and the way my life is forever changed.”
Kardashian, who is studying to become a lawyer, added that she regularly visits prisons. “I have always believed in the second chances,” she said.
Diamonds, challenge and public image
Kardashian made a fashion statement in court, carrying a collar of 1.5 million dollars by Samer Halimeh New York. The jeweler’s press release for the necklace was released even though it was on the stand of witnesses, a reminder that the visibility remains of the currency, even if the rules have developed.
The choice reflected the challenge and recovery of the image and luxury formerly used against it.
Kardashian said that Paris had once been a sanctuary, a place where she was walking at 3 or 4 in the morning, making a shopping wealth, sometimes stopping for hot chocolate. It’s always really safe, “she said.” It was always a magical place. “
What is the next step
Twelve suspects were originally charged. One is dead. One has been apologized due to a disease. The French press nicknamed the group Les Papys Braquers – “Grandpa thieves” – but prosecutors say they were not harmless retirees.
Defenders face accusations, including armed robberies, kidnappings and a gang association. If they are convicted, they could be in life for life.
Kardashian said she was grateful for the opportunity to “tell my truth” in the Paris courtroom.
“It’s my closure,” she said. “It is me that I put that, let’s hope, to rest.”
The trial should end on May 23.
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