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PARIS -- The Paris robbery of Kim Kardashian lasted lone minutes — but its interaction reverberated for astir a decade.
On Friday, a tribunal successful the French superior volition determine the verdict successful one of the astir audacious personage heists successful modern French past — the nighttime masked men stormed the star’s luxury apartment, tied her up astatine gunpoint and vanished into the acheronian with $6 cardinal successful jewels.
Nine men and a pistillate basal accused of carrying retired oregon aiding the transgression during the Paris Fashion Week successful 2016, erstwhile the robbers, dressed arsenic police, forced their mode into the glamorous Hôtel de Pourtalès, bound her with zip ties and escaped with her jewelry — a theft that would force celebrities to rethink however they live and support themselves.
After delivering last statements successful court, the defendants were dismissed Friday morning, with a verdict expected aboriginal successful the day.
Among them was 69-year-old Aomar Aït Khedache, the alleged ringleader, who arrived astatine tribunal walking with a stick, his look hidden from cameras. Prosecutors person asked for a 10-year sentence. 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.
Khedache says helium was lone a ft soldier. He blamed a mysterious “X” oregon “Ben” — idiosyncratic 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 — inactive 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.
The accused became known successful France arsenic “les papys braqueurs” — the grandpa robbers. Some arrived successful tribunal successful orthopedic shoes and 1 leaned connected a cane. Some work the proceedings from a screen, hard of proceeding and astir mute. But prosecutors warned observers not to beryllium seduced by brushed appearances.
The proceedings is being heard by a sheet of 3 judges and six jurors, who volition request a bulk ballot to scope a decision.
The defendants look charges including equipped robbery, kidnapping and pack association. If convicted, immoderate of them could look beingness successful prison.
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 Oct. 2, 2016.
“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 behavior successful the property of Instagram. For years, Kardashian had curated her beingness similar a showroom: geo-tagged, 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.
Defense attorneys person asked the tribunal for leniency, citing the defendants’ property and health. But prosecutors importune that transgression experience, not frailty, defined the gang.
Even by the standards of France’s famously deliberate ineligible system, the lawsuit took years to scope trial.
Kardashian, who erstwhile said that the acquisition “really changed everything,” present waits for a verdict — and perhaps, a last measurement of closure.
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Catherine Gaschka contributed to this report.
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