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A Paris tribunal connected Friday recovered the ringleader and 7 different radical blameworthy successful the robbery of Kim Kardashian astir a decennary ago.
Kardashian was bound with zip ties arsenic thieves stole her jewelry during Paris Fashion Week
The Associated Press
· Posted: May 23, 2025 3:01 PM EDT | Last Updated: 4 hours ago
A Paris tribunal connected Friday recovered the ringleader and 7 different radical blameworthy successful the robbery of Kim Kardashian astatine her residence successful the French superior successful 2016. But nary of them volition look situation time.
The tribunal acquitted 2 of the 10 defendants. The sentences being work retired by the tribunal president scope from situation presumption to fines.
Aomar Aït Khedache, 69, the ringleader, got the stiffest sentence, 8 years imprisonment, but 5 of those are suspended.
Three others who were accused connected the astir superior charges got 7 years, 5 of them suspended.
With clip already served successful pretrial detention, nary of those recovered blameworthy volition spell to prison. The proceedings was heard by a three-judge sheet and six jurors.
The main judge, David De Pas, said the ages of the defendants - the oldest is 79 and immoderate others are successful their 60s and 70s — weighed connected the court's determination not to enforce harsher sentences that would person sent them to jail. He said the 9 years betwixt the robbery and the proceedings was besides taken into relationship successful the sentencing.
Still, helium said that Kardashian had been traumatized by the robbery successful her hotel.
"You caused harm," helium said. "You caused fear."
Kardashian 'deeply grateful' to French authorities
Kardashian, who wasn't contiguous for the verdict, issued a connection aft the ruling was announced.
"I americium profoundly grateful to the French authorities for pursuing justness successful this case," she said. "The transgression was the astir terrifying acquisition of my life, leaving a lasting interaction connected maine and my family. While I'll ne'er hide what happened, I judge successful the powerfulness of maturation and accountability and commune for healing for all. I stay committed to advocating for justice, and promoting a just ineligible system."
Khedache arrived astatine tribunal walking with a stick, his look hidden from cameras.
His DNA, recovered connected the bands utilized to hindrance Kardashian, was a cardinal breakthrough that helped ace unfastened the case.
Wiretaps captured him giving orders, recruiting accomplices and arranging to merchantability the diamonds successful Belgium.
A diamond-encrusted cross, dropped during the escape, was the lone portion of jewelry ever recovered.
The transgression took spot connected the nighttime of Oct. 2, 2016 during Paris Fashion Week.
The robbers, dressed arsenic police, forced their mode into the glamorous Hôtel de Pourtalès, bound Kardashian with zip ties astatine gunpoint and escaped with her jewelry — a theft that would unit celebrities to rethink however they unrecorded and support themselves.
WATCH | Kim Kardashian arrives astatine Paris court: Kim Kardashian arrives astatine Paris tribunal to attest against accused robbers
The accused became known successful France arsenic "les papys braqueurs," oregon the grandpa robbers. Some arrived successful tribunal successful orthopedic shoes and 1 leaned connected a cane.
But prosecutors warned observers not to beryllium fooled.
The defendants faced charges including equipped robbery, kidnapping and pack association.
Kardashian forgave ringleader aft helium wrote letter
Khedache had said helium was lone a ft soldier. He blamed a mysterious "X" oregon "Ben" — someone prosecutors accidental ne'er existed.
His lawyer pleaded for clemency, pointing to 1 of the trial's astir visceral moments: Kardashian's earlier courtroom brushwood with the antheral accused of orchestrating her ordeal. Though she wasn't contiguous Friday, her words — and the representation of that infinitesimal — still echoed.
"She looked astatine him erstwhile she came, she listened to the missive helium had written to her, and past she forgave him," lawyer Franck Berton told The Associated Press.
Kardashian, typically shielded by information and spectacle, had locked eyes with Khedache arsenic the missive was work aloud.
"I bash admit the letter, I forgive you," she said. "But it doesn't alteration the feelings and the trauma and the information that my beingness was everlastingly changed." A tabloid transgression had go thing earthy and human.
Khedache connected Friday asked for "a 1000 pardons," communicated via a written enactment successful court. Other defendants besides utilized their last words to explicit remorse.
'I perfectly did deliberation I was going to die'
Kardashian's grounds earlier this period was the affectional precocious point. In a packed courtroom, she recounted however she was thrown onto a bed, zip-tied, and had a weapon pressed to her connected the nighttime of the robbery.
"I perfectly did deliberation I was going to die," she said. "I person babies. I person to marque it home. They tin instrumentality everything. I conscionable person to marque it home."
She was dragged into a marble bath and told to enactment silent. When the robbers fled, she freed herself by scraping the portion connected her wrists disconnected against the sink, past hid with her friend, shaking and barefoot.
She said that Paris had erstwhile been her sanctuary — a metropolis she would rotation astatine 3 a.m., model shopping, stopping for blistery chocolate. That illusion was shattered.
The robbery echoed acold beyond the City of Light. It forced a recalibration of personage behaviour successful the property of Instagram. For years, Kardashian had curated her beingness similar a showroom: geotagged, diamond-lit, nationalist by design. But this was the infinitesimal the showroom turned into a transgression scene. In her words, "People were watching.… They knew wherever I was."
Afterward, she stopped posting her determination successful existent time. She stripped her societal media provender of lavish gifts and vanished from Paris for years. Other stars followed suit. Privacy became luxury.
Even by the standards of France's famously deliberate ineligible system, the lawsuit took years to scope trial.