PARIS (AP) — The final time Kim Kardashian confronted the boys that police say robbed her, she was sure with zip ties and held at gunpoint, and feared she may die. On Tuesday, almost a decade later, she returns to Paris to testify in opposition to them.
Some of the recognizable figures on the planet is anticipated to take the stand in opposition to the ten males accused of orchestrating the 2016 theft that left her locked in a marble toilet whereas masked assailants made off with greater than $6 million in jewels.
Kardashian is ready to talk about the trauma that reshaped her life and redefined the dangers of movie star within the age of social media. Her look is anticipated to be essentially the most emotionally charged second of a trial that started final month.
Court docket officers are bracing for a crowd, and safety can be tight. A second courtroom has been opened for journalists following by way of video feed.
Kardashian’s testimony is anticipated to revisit, in painful element, how intruders zip-tied her fingers, demanded her ring, and left her believing she may by no means see her kids once more.
Twelve suspects had been initially charged. One has died. One other has been excused from proceedings on account of severe sickness. Most are of their 60s and 70s — dubbed les papys braqueurs, or “the grandpa robbers,” by the French press — however investigators insist they had been no innocent retirees. Authorities have described them as a seasoned and coordinated prison group.
Two of the defendants have admitted being on the scene. The others deny any involvement — some even declare they didn’t know who Kardashian was. However police say the group tracked her actions by her personal social media posts, which flaunted her jewellery, pinpointed her location, and uncovered her vulnerability.
The heist reworked Kardashian right into a cautionary story of hyper-visibility within the digital age.
Within the aftermath, she withdrew from public life. She developed extreme anxiousness and later described signs of agoraphobia. “I hated to go out,” she stated in a 2021 interview. “I didn’t want anybody to know where I was … I just had such anxiety.”
Her attorneys confirmed she would seem in courtroom. “She has tremendous appreciation and admiration for the French judicial system,” they wrote, including that she hopes the trial proceeds “in an orderly fashion … and with respect for all parties.”
As soon as dismissed in components of the French press as a actuality TV spectacle — and lambasted by Karl Lagerfeld for being too flashy — Kardashian now returns as a key witness in a case that has pressured a wider reckoning with how movie star, crime, and notion collide.
Her attorneys say she is “particularly grateful” to French authorities — and able to confront those that attacked her with dignity.
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Related Press journalist Nicolas Vaux-Montagny contributed to this report.
