A French court is to give a verdict on Friday in the trial of 10 people accused of robbing reality TV star Kim Kardashian of some $10 million worth of jewellery in Paris.
Nine men and one woman have been standing trial since April, with prosecutors seeking the toughest jail terms of 10 years for the four men accused of carrying out the robbery.
On the night of October 2-3, 2016, Kardashian, then 35, was robbed while staying at an exclusive hotel in central Paris. She was threatened with a gun to the head and tied up with her mouth taped.
Most of the stolen valuables were never recovered, including a diamond ring given to Kardashian by her then-husband, rapper Kanye West.
The ring alone was valued at 3.5 million euros ($3.9 million) and the robbery was the biggest against a private individual in France in 20 years.
Most of the accused are now in their 60s and 70s and have been dubbed the “Grandpa robbers” by French media.
They have underworld nicknames like “Old Omar” and “Blue Eyes” that resemble those of old-school French bandits of 1960s and 1970s films noirs.
The American star testified at the trial last week when she said she feared she would be raped and killed by the masked men who held her at gunpoint.
“I thought I was going to die,” Kardashian, who is among the world’s most followed people on Instagram and X, told the court, wearing a jewelled necklace.
The trial has attracted huge media attention and crowds have flocked around the court on Paris’s historic Ile de la Cite hoping for a glimpse of the celebrity.
On Wednesday, prosecutors requested 10-year jail terms for the four men accused of carrying out the robbery, including its alleged mastermind, Aomar Ait Khedache.
Khedache is completely deaf and virtually mute, and had to read the sentencing demands from a screen.
The 69-year-old, who is known as “Old Omar”, has admitted to tying up Kardashian but denies being the robbery mastermind.
Kardashian told the court that she forgave him after hearing a letter of apology from Khedache.
“I forgive you for what has taken place but it does not change the emotion, the feelings, the trauma and the way my life changed,” she told Khedache.
Another defendant, Yunice Abbas, wrote a book about the heist titled “I Kidnapped Kim Kardashian”.
In the book, he described how his bag got caught in the wheel of his escape vehicle, a bicycle, causing him to fall off and have to scramble to shove the loot back in the bag.
He said in April that he “totally regretted” taking part in the theft. Abbas, who now has Parkinson’s disease, told the court stealing from Kardashian was the one job “too many” that “opened his eyes” to his wrongdoing.
On Thursday, the defendants’ lawyers urged the jury to spare their ageing clients from prison. Khedache’s lawyer argued: “At that age, a prison sentence is life imprisonment.”
Kardashian said the Paris robbery had shaken her view of her security.
“It changed the way that I felt safe at home,” she said, adding that she now had up to six security guards there.
The US celebrity, sometimes described as being “famous for being famous”, became well known in the early 2000s through TV reality shows, before launching fashion brands and appearing in films.
AFP
