On Friday, a French court will render a decision in the trial of ten defendants who are alleged to have stolen jewelry valued at approximately $10 million from reality TV star Kim Kardashian in Paris.
Since April, nine men and one woman have been on trial. Prosecutors are requesting the maximum prison sentence of ten years for the four men who are alleged to have committed the crime.
Before the court starts deliberating on Friday morning, the defendants will have one last opportunity to speak. In the evening, a verdict is anticipated.
Kardashian, who was 35 at the time, was robbed on the evening of October 2-3, 2016, while she was lodging at a posh hotel in the heart of Paris.
She was restrained, had her mouth taped, and threatened with a gun to the head.
A diamond ring that Kardashian received from her ex-husband, rapper Kanye West, was among the majority of the stolen assets that were never found.
The heist was the largest to target a private citizen in France in two decades, and the ring alone was worth 3.5 million euros ($3.9 million).
The French media have branded the accused the “Grandpa robbers,” as the majority of them are now in their 60s and 70s.
They go by underworld monikers like “Old Omar” and “Blue Eyes,” which are reminiscent of the classic French bandits from film noirs from the 1960s and 1970s.
Wearing a glittering necklace, the American celebrity gave testimony at the trial last week.
She claimed that the masked guys who held her at gunpoint feared raping and killing her.
Kardashian, one of the most popular users on Instagram and X worldwide, told the court, “I thought I was going to die.”
Crowds have gathered around the court in Paris’s famed Ile de la Cite neighborhood in hopes of catching a sight of the celebrity, and the trial has garnered a great deal of media coverage.
“I pardon you.”
Prosecutors on Wednesday asked for 10-year prison sentences for the four individuals who are suspected of committing the heist, including Aomar Ait Khedache, who is said to have been its mastermind.
Khedache is virtually mute and completely deaf and has to read the prosecutors’ sentencing demands on 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.
“I believe in second chances,” added Kardashian, who told her 356 million Instagram followers on Thursday that she had finished law school after six years of studying.
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 aging clients from prison.
Khedache’s lawyer argued: “At that age, a prison sentence is life imprisonment.”
Kardashian claimed that her perception of her security had been altered by the Paris robbery.
She added that she now had up to six security guards at home, saying, “It changed the way that I felt safe at home.”
The American superstar, who is frequently referred to as “famous for being famous,” rose to fame in the early 2000s thanks to TV reality shows before starting fashion brands and making movie appearances.
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