Kim Kardashian has arrived at court to face a group accused of robbing her at gunpoint nearly a decade ago.
Wearing a black skirt suit, sunglasses, and with her hair pulled back into a chignon, the US reality star walked up the steps accompanied by her mother Kris and a large entourage.
The US reality star greeted the judge with a soft “Hello,” thanking the French authorities for “allowing me to tell my truth”.
She began by telling the court of her love for Paris, calling it a “magical place,” before becoming tearful when describing the robbery, and talking of her “confusion” when two men entered her room dressed as police officers, accompanied by the handcuffed concierge.
She told the court: “I had fallen asleep naked with a robe on, I was flustered.”
Kardashian will face 10 defendants who it is alleged pulled off one of the most audacious celebrity heists in modern French history in the early hours of 3 October 2016.
Ahead of her in-person appearance, Kardashian’s lawyers said she was ready to “confront” the defendants and intended to do so “with dignity and courage”.
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It’s alleged that five masked men posing as police officers stormed the residence, with two entering Kardashian’s room and robbing her at gunpoint.
Police say the men escaped on bicycles, with around $9m of jewellery, including a $4m engagement ring from Kardashian’s then-husband Kanye West. Most of the jewellery was never recovered.
Earlier on Tuesday, in Paris’s central criminal court, Kardashian’s stylist Simone Harouche described the moment she was woken by the US star’s screams of terror and feared she had been “raped or violated”.
Ms Harouche, 45, who says she has worked for Kardashian for many years and has been friends with her since she was 12, told the court she was woken by “a sound I had never heard from Kim… It was terror”.
Sleeping in a separate apartment, on the next floor down from Kardashian’s, she went on: “What I heard specifically was [Kim saying], ‘I have babies and I need to live – that is what she kept saying… Take everything. I need to live'”.
She told the judge: “When I realised something terrible was going on upstairs and I realised it was not friends [in Kim’s room], I started looking for my telephone and I started looking for something to help save mine and Kim’s life.”
She went on to lock herself in her bathroom and hide in her shower, where she called Kardashian’s sister Kourtney and texted her security guard, Pascal Duvier, telling them, “Something is very wrong… Kim is upstairs with men and we need help.”
She says minutes later, Kardashian “hopped” into her room, explaining: “To see my friend with her feet taped and a very light robe with nothing under, and all messed up and pulled, I thought she could have been raped or very violated.”
She said she removed the tape from Kardashian’s feet, and her friend was “beside herself”, adding, “I’ve never seen her like that before. She was screaming, ‘We need to get out, what do we do if they come back? We need to jump from the first floor, we need to get out'”.
Later, when questioned by the lawyer of one of the defendants on why she did not come out of the bathroom, she said: “I’m the kind of person to hide, [Kardashian’s] the kind of person to take care of other people.”
‘Just because a woman wears jewellery, doesn’t make her a target’
When asked by the judge whether she or Kardashian had believed at the time that wearing and sharing images of such expensive jewellery would be a risk, Ms Harouche says: “Just because a woman wears jewellery doesn’t make her a target. That’s like saying because a woman wears a short skirt she deserves to be raped”.
She went on to say: “I think that that moment changed [Kardashian’s] life forever… In terms of security, she doesn’t go alone to places anymore.”
Read more: Everything you need to know about the Paris trial
Following the robbery, Ms Harouche says she quit her job as a stylist as the experience “made me fearful of all the things that could happen to celebrities, and being around them”.
Asking for ‘forgiveness’
At the end of her time in the witness stand, the judge attempted to play a video message from one of the defendants, Yunice Abbas.
Mr Abbas, who has admitted his part in the heist, published a book in 2021, titled “I Kidnapped Kim Kardashian”. A court has since ruled he will not benefit financially from it.
A tech issue meant the message would not play, so instead, the judge read out the statement from Mr Abbas, asking for “forgiveness” for his actions. When asked by the judge if she had a reaction to the apology, Ms Harouche answered, “No”.
The trial, which is being held in front of three judges and six jury members, is due to conclude at the end of this week.
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