Kim Kardashian's Paris robbery trial: Everything you need to know

In October 2016, Kim Kardashian was robbed at gunpoint - with jewellery worth millions of dollars stolen during the audacious heist in Paris.

It was the biggest robbery of an individual in France for more than 20 years - and made front pages around the world.

Now, almost a decade on, the case has finally come to court, with Kardashian giving evidence in person.

Why has it taken so long? What did Kardashian say in court? And who exactly are the "grandpa robbers" facing trial?

Here's everything you need to know.

What happened?

Two years after Kardashian and rapper Kanye West married in an ostentatious week-long celebration spanning Paris and Florence, the Kardashian-West clan were back in the French capital for Paris Fashion Week.

Her then-husband had returned to the US to continue his Saint Pablo tour but Kardashian, along with her sister Kourtney and various members of their entourage, remained in Paris, staying in an exclusive set of apartments so discreet they've been dubbed the "No Address Hotel".

Nestled on Tronchet Street, just a stone's throw from Place de l'Opera, and close to the fashionable Avenue Montaigne, the Hotel de Pourtales is popular with A-list stars staying in the French capital.

A stay in the Sky Penthouse, the suite occupied by Kardashian, will currently set you back about £13,000 a night.

On the evening of 3 October, after attending a fashion show with her sister, Kardashian remained in the apartment alone while the rest of her convoy, including her bodyguard Pascal Duvier, went out for the night.

At about 2.30am, three armed men wearing ski masks and dressed as police forced their way into the apartment block and, according to investigators, they threatened the concierge at gunpoint.

Two of them are alleged to have forced the concierge to lead them to Kardashian's suite. He later told police they yelled at him: "Where's the rapper's wife?"

Kardashian said she had been "dozing" on her bed when the men entered her room.

According to police, the robbers, who left straight after grabbing their haul, escaped on bicycles with items estimated to be worth about $10m (£7.5m), including a $4m (£3m) 18.88-carat diamond engagement ring from West.

She has said she believes her social media posts provided the alleged robbers with "a window of opportunity".

"I was Snapchatting that I was home, and that everyone was going out," she said in the months after the incident.

After they had left, Kardashian said she escaped her restraints and went to find help. After speaking to detectives, she immediately returned to the US on a private jet and later hired a completely new security team.

What was stolen?

As well as her engagement ring, Kardashian said the thieves took her large Louis Vuitton jewellery box, which she said contained "everything I owned".

In police reports given to the French authorities at about 4.30am on the night of the alleged robbery, Kardashian listed these items as having been stolen:

• Two diamond Cartier bracelets
• A gold and diamond Jacob necklace
• Diamond earrings by Lauren Schwartz
• Yanina earrings
• Three gold Jacob necklaces
• Little bracelets, jewels and rings
• A Lauren Schwartz diamond necklace
• A necklace with six little diamonds
• A necklace with Saint spelt out in diamonds
• A cross-shaped diamond-encrusted Jacob cross
• A yellow gold Rolex watch
• Two yellow gold rings
• An iPhone 6 and a BlackBerry

Police have recovered only the diamond-encrusted cross that was dropped by the robbers while leaving.

It's likely the gold in the haul was melted down and resold, while the diamond engagement ring would be far too recognisable to sell on the open market.

How long will the trial last?

The hearing started at the Court of Appeal of Paris - the largest appeals court in France - on 28 April and was originally scheduled to last a month.

It is being presided over by a lead judge, two professional assessors, and six main jurors.

The hearing involves more than 2,000 documents, and there are four civil parties.

Who is being tried?

There were initially 12 defendants in the case, but one person has died and another has a medical condition that prevents their involvement. This means 10 people - nine men and one woman - are standing trial.

Five of them, who were all aged between 60 and 72 at the time of the incident, face armed robbery and kidnapping charges. They are:

• Yunice Abbas
• Aomar Ait Khedache
• Harminv Ait Khedache
• Didier Dubreucq
• Marc-Alexandre Boyer

Abbas, 72, has admitted his participation in the robbery. In 2021, he published a book about the robbery, titled I Kidnapped Kim Kardashian. A court ruled he would not benefit financially from the book.

Aomar Ait Khedache, 69, known to French crime reporters as "Old Omar", has also admitted participating in the heist but denies the prosecution's accusation that he was the ringleader.

The remaining five defendants are charged with complicity in the heist or the unauthorised possession of a weapon. They are:

• Florus Heroui
• Gary Madar
• Christiane Glotin
• Francois Delaporte
• Marc Boyer

Among those, Mader was a VIP greeter who worked for the car company Kardashian used in Paris, and Heroui was a bar manager who allegedly passed on information about Kardashian's movements.

With many of the accused now ageing and with various serious health conditions, and some having spent time in jail following their arrest, all are currently free under judicial supervision.

If found guilty, those accused of the more serious crimes could face 10 years to life imprisonment.

What did Kardashian say in court?

Kardashian gave evidence on Tuesday at the mid-point of the four-week trial.

She swept into court in a black Mercedes along with her mother Kris Jenner and a four-strong security team.

Dressed in a designer suit, sunglasses, diamond earrings, necklace, and a large ring (not dissimilar to the $4m engagement ring that was part of the stolen haul), she spent five hours giving evidence in the Voltaire Room of Paris's historic Palais de Justice.

Praised by one lawyer for the "dignity and preciseness" of her words - Kardashian is a trainee lawyer herself - she began describing the night of 3 October, telling how a "last-minute" decision to stay at home led to the "terrifying and life-changing" ordeal.

She told the court how she was "grabbed and tied up" by one of the two men who entered her room and was "dragged from one room to the other,".

The celebrity said she believed she'd be raped and killed, telling the judge she was exposed from the waist down at one point during the robbery and adding: "Being touched and picked up when you're naked is very violating".

Eventually "dropped on the hard floor," she "hopped" to the room of her stylist, where the pair hid "in the bushes on the balcony" and made plans to jump one floor down to the ground should the robbers return.

As for the long-term impact of the heist, she detailed the extreme security measures she's since employed - including having only personal drivers, hiring security guards to sleep outside rooms and on every floor of buildings she stays in. She also refuses to keep jewellery in her home, telling the court: "I can't sleep if jewellery is at home with my babies."

In a bizarre court moment, three of the defendants spoke directly to her - two expressed "regret" and a third "empathised" with her pain. While Kardashian expressed her forgiveness, she made it clear that in no way altered "the emotion and the feelings and the trauma the way my life is forever changed."

She explained to the judge that US culture is now all about sharing online and aptly dubbed social media posts "mini reality shows".

While saying she "never imagined in my wildest dreams that me posting something would be an invitation for someone to steal something," she admitted she'd now changed her posting behaviour: "Emotionally, I make sure I don't post photos and videos in real time… It's changed my business."

She also said the fact "people said I'd made it up for my TV show" was "really hurtful" and "stung deeply."

Visibly tired by the end of the session, and sitting to finish her final questions, she swept from the court at the closure of her evidence, avoiding the melee of journalists outside, scrumming for a final picture or word.

Why has it taken so long to come to court?

There was initially a manhunt after the robbery, with French police under pressure to prove that Paris's security was not in question.

Just the year before, in 2015, the capital had been shaken by terrorist attacks by Islamist militants, in which 130 people were killed, including 90 at a music event at the Bataclan theatre.

French police initially arrested 17 people in the Kardashian case in January 2017 - three months after the robbery - assisted by DNA traces found on plastic bands used to tie her wrists. Twelve people were later charged.

It was ordered to be sent to trial in 2021 - at a time when limited court proceedings were happening due to multiple COVID lockdowns, and France was holding its largest ever criminal trial over the November 2015 terror attacks.

What has Kardashian said about the incident?

After the robbery, Kardashian took three weeks away from filming her reality TV show Keeping Up With the Kardashians, and took a three-month break from social media.

A March 2017 episode entitled Paris was when she first spoke publicly about her ordeal.

She described first hearing a noise in her apartment, and calling out, thinking it was her sister and assistant: "At that moment when there wasn't an answer, my heart started to get really tense. Like, you know, your stomach just kind of like, knots up and you're like, 'OK, what's going on?' I knew something wasn't quite right."

She added: "They asked for money. I said, 'I don't have any money'. They dragged me out to the hallway on top of the stairs. That's when I saw the gun, clear as day. I was looking at the gun, looking down back at the stairs. I was like, I have a split second in my mind to make this quick decision.

"Either they're going to shoot me in the back or if I make it [down the stairs] and the elevator does not open in time or the stairs are locked, there's no way out."

Three months later, she told a Forbes Power Women's Summit she had changed her approach to posting on social media: "They had followed my moves on social media, and they knew my every move and what I had."

She added: "It was definitely a huge, huge, huge lesson for me to not show off some of the things that I have. It was a huge lesson to me to not show off where I go. It's just changed my whole life, but I think for the better."

In October 2020, Kardashian told US interviewer David Letterman her sister had been at the forefront of her mind during the incident.

Speaking on My Next Guest Needs No Introduction, Kardashian said: "I kept on thinking about Kourtney, I kept on thinking she's going to come home and I'm going to be dead in the room and she's going to be traumatised for the rest of her life if she sees me... I thought that was my fate."

When speaking to French police about the impact the robbery had had on her three months after it, Kardashian said her perception of jewellery had changed.

She went on to describe Paris as "not the right place" for her, and didn't return to the French capital for two years following the robbery.

Kardashian has since said in a 2023 episode of Keeping Up With The Kardashians that she did not purchase any jewellery in the seven years following the robbery, kept no jewellery at her home and only wore items that are either borrowed or fake.

She said the realisation that material items don't matter has made her "a completely different person in the best way".

(c) Sky News 2025: Kim Kardashian's Paris robbery trial: Everything you need to know