One among the suspects within the armed robbery of reality TV star Kim Kardashian said he regrets the “trauma” he caused her nearly nine years after Kardashian was certain, gagged and robbed at gunpoint during Paris Fashion Week in October 2016.
The robbery was considered the most important heist targeting an person that Paris had seen in many years. The jury of six residents will conduct the trial, together with three magistrates — a procedure in France reserved for probably the most serious crimes.
Defendant Yunice Abbas said this was the primary time he truly recognized the “trauma” he caused Kardashian, because the trial began Tuesday within the proceedings against 10 people charged in reference to the 2016 robbery, where greater than US$10 million price of jewellery was stolen.
“I regret it, not because I got caught, but because … there was a trauma,” Abbas, 72, told the jury.
Defendant Yunice Abbas arrives for the beginning of the trial for the 2016 robbery and kidnapping of U.S. celebrity Kim Kardashian on the Assize Court of Paris, on April 28, 2025.
MAGALI COHEN/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images
Abbas was the primary of several defendants set to testify within the trial and had previously confessed to his role within the crime in his 2021 book, titled I Kidnapped Kim Kardashian, which got here up through the testimony.
He claimed that he was not accountable for the title of the book and he said he was not involved in tying up Kardashian through the robbery, in response to NBC News.
Abbas said he acted as a lookout on the reception area on the bottom floor, ensuring the escape route was clear. He said he was unarmed and didn’t personally threaten Kardashian, but acknowledged he shared responsibility for the crime.
He was arrested in January 2017 and spent 21 months in prison before being released under judicial supervision. Abbas and nine others, called the “grandpa robbers” in local media on account of their ages, are alleged to have played different roles within the heist.
Based on Abbas, minutes after the raid began, his accomplices got here down from Kardashian’s apartment and gave him a bag of jewellery.
As he was fleeing the scene on a bicycle, he saw a police automotive, but officers weren’t yet aware of the robbery. Abbas said that as he rode the bicycle, the bag containing the jewellery became caught within the front wheel and he fell to the bottom, spilling the contents of the bag.
“I picked the jewels up and left,” he said.
The next morning, a passerby found a diamond-encrusted cross on the street and handed it to police. That was the one jewelry from the robbery that was ever recovered.
Abbas claimed he didn’t know Kardashian’s identity on the time of the robbery.
“I used to be told a couple of big name, a rapper’s wife. That’s all the knowledge I had,” he said. “Until the subsequent morning, after I heard on TV in regards to the influencer. That’s after I understood who she was.”
During questioning on Tuesday, Abbas spoke about his criminal past, including an armed robbery of a bank in Belgium. He said that when he was younger, he was against theft but later turned to a lifetime of crime on account of the bad influences of friends and money difficulties.
He said he “never had a task model” and had done what he believed he needed to do as a way to provide for his children.
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Within the years following the robbery, Abbas said he now felt “very uneasy” about what took place that day, adding, “I can’t do anything besides apologize.”
In her account to investigators, Kardashian described two men forcing their way into her bedroom at a non-public apartment complex in Paris and pointing a gun towards her, asking for her ring. She said she was tied up with plastic cables and tape while the intruders were in search of jewels, including her engagement ring price thousands and thousands of dollars.
Twelve people were originally expected within the defendants’ box. One has died and one other is seriously ailing and may’t be tried. Based on the investigation, five of the ten defendants were present on the scene of the robbery.
Others expected to face trial include the alleged ringleader, 68-year-old Aomar Aït Khedache; his son Harminy, 37, who’s accused of being the getaway driver; Didier Dubreucq, 69, referred to as “Blue Eyes,” who’s the second alleged robber suspected of entering the flat; and Christiane Glotin, 78, who is anticipated to face trial as an accomplice within the heist.
This court sketch made on April 28, 2025 shows defendants Aomar Ait Khedache (C, front), Francois Delaporte (R, up), Florus Heroui (2nd R, up) and Christiane Glotin (4th T, up) through the trial for the 2016 robbery and kidnapping of U.S. celebrity Kim Kardashian on the Assize Court of Paris, on April 28, 2025.
BENOIT PEYRUCQ/AFP via Getty Images
The brother of Kardashian’s driver in Paris, Gary Madar, 35, can also be expected to face trial. He’s accused of tipping the others off to Kardashian’s location.
Defendant Gary Madar through the trial for the 2016 robbery and kidnapping of U.S. celebrity Kim Kardashian on the Assize Court of Paris, on April 28, 2025.
MAGALI COHEN/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images
Kardashian, 44, is anticipated to testify in person on the trial, scheduled to run through May 23. Her lawyers said she is going to testify in person and is anticipated to talk on May 13.
“Ms. Kardashian is reserving her testimony for the court and jury and doesn’t want to elaborate further right now,” they said. “She has great respect and admiration for the French justice system and has been treated with great respect by the French authorities.”
In interviews and on her family’s reality TV show, she has described being terrified as robbers pointed a gun at her. She said she thought she was going to be raped and killed.
In March 2017 on Keeping Up With the Kardashians, the mother of 4 theorized that a gaggle of men were following her family the whole Paris trip and admitted she was Snapchatting that night, letting her followers know that everybody was going out, including her then-bodyguard Pascal Duvier, and that she could be alone.
“What I feel happened now after serious about it a lot is that there was probably a gaggle of men that were following us the whole trip. I used to be Snapchatting that I used to be home and everybody was going out.
“That they had this window of opportunity and just went for it,” she said.
She explained she was falling asleep in her room when she heard pounding on the steps. She thought it was her sister Kourtney and her assistant Stephanie. She continued to call out “hello” without getting any response.
“Then at that moment, when there wasn’t a solution, my heart began to get really tense, like your stomach just form of like knots up, and also you’re like, ‘OK, what’s occurring?’” she said. “I knew something wasn’t quite right.”
She told her sisters what occurred after the armed robbers entered.
“I saw two guys holding one other guy down in police uniforms, right outside of my bedroom, five feet away. So I slid off my bed and picked up my phone, and I’m like, ‘I don’t know how one can call 911 in a unique country.’ So I called Pascal after which the guy got here in, grabbed the phone from me, and threw me on the bed. I used to be like, ‘That is it.’”
She says she recognized the concierge, who was handcuffed, holding the important thing to her room.
“What I heard from talking to [the concierge] afterward, they said, ‘Where’s the rapper’s wife? Allow us to as much as her room,’” she said.
“He grabbed my legs — I had no clothes on under there — and he pulled me towards him on the front of the bed and I believed, ‘OK, that is the moment he’s going to rape me,’” the Skims founder said during her interview.
“I fully mentally prepped myself and he didn’t. He duct taped my legs together after which they’d the gun as much as me, I knew that was the moment they were totally going to shoot me in the pinnacle.”
Kardashian’s lawyer, Michael Rhodes, has said the fact TV star and entrepreneur wants the trial “to proceed in an orderly fashion in accordance with French law and with respect for all parties to the case.”
— With files from The Associated Press
