Paris — After a month-long trial, the ten people accused of robbing billionaire celebrity Kim Kardashian were given the last word in the final session of their trial on Friday before the jury retired to consider its verdict. The man accused of being the brains behind the $10 million jewelry heist in 2016 offered “a thousand apologies” in a scribbled note to the court.
Aomar Aït Khedache, 69, is now deaf and largely mute. Prosecutors have called for him to be sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Nine men and one woman have been on trial for their involvement in the brazen armed robbery, facing charges including robbery and kidnapping. The gang was dubbed “the Grandpa Robbers” by French media because most were in their 60s at the time of the heist.
Kardashian was in Paris for Fashion Week in October 2016, staying in a discreet hotel in the center of the city. In emotional four-and-a-half-hour testimony 10 days ago, she told the Paris court she “absolutely” believed she was going to be “raped and killed” when one of the armed, masked robbers grabbed her leg and pulled her toward him as she lay on her bed wearing just a bathrobe.
She was bound with zip ties and duct tape and locked in the bathroom while the robbers searched her room for the expensive jewelry they said they had seen on social media posts by the woman they recognized only as “the rapper’s wife” — a reference to her then-husband Kanye West.
Reuters/Piroschka van de Wouw
During the final session on Friday, the two accused whose DNA was recovered from the scene of the crime, both of whom have admitted to their parts in the robbery, apologized to Kardashian and the court.
Yunis Abbas, 71, who had already apologized directly to Kardashian for contributing to the trauma she said she lives with daily, told the court: “All I have to say is to apologize to you again; I’m sorry for what I may have done.”
He was suspected of being the lookout for the gang, stationed outside the luxury residence known as the No Name hotel.
Khedache, in his scribbled note, also apologized to his son. Harminy Aït Khedache, 38, was accused being a driver for the gang that night. He faces eight years in prison if convicted.
Investigators only found DNA from two of the accused, and in court on Friday, the other eight took to the witness stand to reiterate their claims that they had nothing to do with the crime.
The prosecution has called for 10-year sentences against the four men charged with directly participating in the armed robbery — Khedache, Abbas, Didier Dubreucq, 70, and the youngest of the accused, Marc-Alexandre Boyer, 35.
The prosecutor said in court that they were “experienced robbers who came up with a plan and succeeded.”
Florus Heroui, 52, a Parisian bar manager, and Gary Madar, 36, a waiter and brother of Kardashian’s regular Paris chauffeur, who allegedly fed tips to the gang, both face possible seven-year sentences if convicted.
The only woman on trial, Christiane Glotin, 79, a former companion of the senior Khedache, was accused of being the gang’s “secretary,” taking care of logistics. The prosecution has called for to receive a six-year sentence.
The prosecution called for François Delaporte, who is charged with being an accomplice, to be sentenced to four years in prison, with two of them suspended, and for Marc Boyer, who’s charged with illegal possession of a weapon, to be fined about $23,000. He is the father of Marc-Alexandre Boyer.
