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Kim Kardashian pleaded for her life during Paris robbery, her stylist tells court Kim Kardashian feared she would be ‘raped and killed’ during Paris robbery
(about 3 hours later)
Simone Harouche says she was woken by the star’s screams and feared she was being raped and they would both be killed TV star tells court of moment when two gunmen burst into the bedroom of her luxury hotel apartment in 2016
The night armed robbers tied up Kim Kardashian and forced her to hand over jewels worth millions of dollars left her traumatised and changed her life for ever, her best friend and fashion stylist told a Paris court. A tearful Kim Kardashian described how she was convinced she was going to be raped and shot dead when two gunmen burst into the bedroom of her luxury hotel apartment in Paris while the TV star was in bed.
Speaking for the first time since the 2016 attack in Paris, Simone Harouche said she thought the American TV star was being raped and that they would both die when she was woken from her sleep in the early hours by the sound of Kardashian’s terrified screams. One of the men, who were dressed as police officers, shouted “ring, ring,” pointing to his fingers, before dragging her across the bed leaving her naked body exposed and using zip ties and tape to secure her wrists and ankles. They then taped her mouth and carried her into the bathroom, where they dumped her on the floor.
Harouche, 45, hid in her bathroom and tried to raise the alarm when the men broke into their luxury hotel duplex in the early hours. Kardashian was in Paris – a city she said she had “always loved” – for fashion week in October 2016 and was staying in a luxury hotel when the robbers attacked after she returned from dinner. Ten people – nine men and a woman aged between 35 and 78 – are on trial in connection with France’s biggest personal robbery in 20 years. Eight of the accused deny any involvement.
“I’ve worked for Kim, I have also been friends with Kim for a long time. I know her very well, I know her sounds, her mannerisms, when she’s happy, when she’s more serious. We’ve been friends since we were little girls,” she said. The suspects, nicknamed the “grandpa gang” because of their advanced age, fled with jewellery estimated at $10m (£7.5m) in value, including the 18.88-carat diamond engagement ring Kardashian’s then husband, rapper Kanye West, gave her, estimated to be worth $4m.
“So when I heard this sound it was very different and it woke me up out of my sleep because it was sound that I had never heard from Kim. It was terror. What I heard specifically: ‘I have babies and I need to live,’ this is what she kept saying. ‘Take everything – I need to live’.” Taking the stand at the Palais de Justice in Paris on Tuesday, Kardashian, 44, was reduced to tears as she was asked to recall the attack.
Harouche was in tears at one point as she testified that she feared she would never see her children, then aged two and four, again. She said she was ready to sleep having packed up everything including her pyjamas ready to fly back to New York the following day. Hearing footsteps on the stairs of the two-storey hotel apartment she thought it was her sister Kourtney and a friend returning from a nightclub.
“I thought they were coming for me next and I was very afraid of what was happening to my friend upstairs. I had no idea what was going on and I was scared she was being raped or violated. I thought the worst.” Two men dressed as police officers entered the room with the concierge of the building who they had taken hostage at gunpoint.
Harouche said Kardashian, whose ankles had been taped, came hopping down the stairs of the two-storey apartment to find her after the gunmen left with an estimated $10m (£7.5m) of jewellery including the 18.9-carat diamond engagement ring from Kardashian’s then husband, Kanye West, worth an estimated $4m (£3m). “I didn’t understand what was happening. I was just about to fall asleep. I was naked with a robe on and I pulled it.
“I heard one of the men saying forcefully ‘ring, ring’ a few times over and pointing at his hand.
“A lot of terrorist attacks had happened in the world … I thought it was some kind of terrorist attack. I didn’t quite get at first that it was about my jewellery.”
She said the robbers found her diamond ring but were not satisfied and dragged her into another room where they found her jewellery box.
“One was holding me by my neck and back and one had a gun to my back. I thought: ‘Should I run down the stairs?’ but then I realised they would probably shoot me and that’s when I decided I should just do what they said.
“They threw me on the bed and the smaller one started to tie my hands together with a zip tie. I was pretty hysterical. I looked at the gentleman who was the concierge and said: ‘What is going to happen to us? Are we going to die?’
“I asked him to translate and say to them: ‘I have babies; I have to make it home. They can take everything but I have to make it home to my babies,’ but he just looked at me and said: ‘I don’t know what is going to happen to us.’
“He saw I was hysterical. Then one of the men leaned into me and said: ‘Shhh, and you will be OK.’ Then he put tape around my hands and my mouth.”
She said her robe had fallen open as one of the men pulled her towards him to tie her legs.
“Everything was exposed … I was certain that was the moment he was going to rape me. I said a prayer. Then he closed my legs and ended up tying them. The gun was still pointed at me. I was certain they were going to shoot me and it was all over.
“I said a prayer for my family, my mother and sister and my friends and hoped that they would have an OK life. I knew my sister would be coming home and she would discover the scene … that she would see me tied up and dead on the bed and have that memory in her brain for ever.”
The men disappeared after dropping her on the bathroom floor where she managed to loosen the ties and make her way to her stylist, Simone Harouche, on the floor below.
Asked about being alone in the hotel without security, Kardashian said she had previously been accustomed to travelling without but now had a team of guards at her home.
“We never felt that we were unsafe before this. This experience changed everything.”
Judge David De Pas said one of the two gunman in the bedroom, Aomar Aît Khedache, 68, known as “Old Omar”, had written a letter to Kardashian regretting the distress he had caused after seeing the influencer talking about the trauma of the attack.
Kardashian began crying as he read it out: “I do not ask for clemency … I approach you as a human being to say how much I regret what happened.”
Dabbing her eyes with a tissue, she said: “Back home in the States I work in the justice system and once wanted to be a lawyer … I believe in second chances. I have been in prisons with people who have committed horrible crimes and I try to find empathy for them. But I also fight for victims who have been through horrific crimes.
“I appreciate the letter. I forgive you for what took place, but it doesn’t change the emotion, feeling and trauma and the way my life is for ever changed.”
In 2018, during Donald Trump’s first term as US president, he commuted the prison sentence of a woman serving a life sentence for selling drugs, following a lobbying effort by Kardashian that saw the celebrity meet with Trump in the Oval Office.
Kardashian said calling the robbers the “grandpa gang” was “a little frustrating”. “It was almost a decade ago when this happened and they were obviously a lot younger and stronger so it’s maybe a little frustrating that is what they’re called today because it’s definitely not what it felt like,” she said.
Earlier, Kardashian’s fashion stylist and best friend testified that she also feared she would never see her children, then aged two and four, again.
Harouche said Kardashian, whose ankles had been taped, came hopping down the stairs of the two-storey apartment to find her after the gunmen left.
“That’s the kind of person Kim is and I’m the sort of person to hide. She’s the sort of person to take care of someone,” she told the court.“That’s the kind of person Kim is and I’m the sort of person to hide. She’s the sort of person to take care of someone,” she told the court.
She added: “To see my friend with her feet taped and her bathrobe, a very light robe with nothing under it, all messed up and pulled I obviously thought she could have been raped or very violated. She was beside herself; I’ve never seen her like this before. She just was screaming and kept saying: ‘We need to get out of here. We need help. What are we going to do if they come back? We may need to jump out the window or hide in the first floor’ … She was just thinking: ‘How are we going to be safe? How are we going to survive’?”
She said both women had had post-traumatic stress disorder and that Kardashian had suffered a life-changing loss of personal freedom.
“She was very free at the time and we never thought being in our hotel room meant that we should ever fear for our safety.”
She added: “I think she went to therapy for a long time also after this happened.”
Asked whether Kardashian had taken risks by flaunting her wealth and whereabouts on social media, she said: “Just because a woman wears jewellery that doesn’t make her a target. That’s like saying because a woman wears a short skirt that she deserves to be raped.
“I work with a lot of celebrities and none of my clients feels they shouldn’t wear something because they might be robbed. That’s part of the business of entertainment.”
A group of men, some of them elderly and nicknamed the “grandpa robbers” by French media, are on trial in Paris, charged with robbing jewels worth millions of euros from the American reality TV star when she was in the French capital for fashion week in 2016.
Ten suspects, whose ages range from 35 to 78, are on trial until 23 May. Some are accused of aiding in the organisation of the robbery. Eight of the accused deny any involvement.
Kardashian is expected at the trial on Tuesday afternoon. The reality star is ready to “confront” her attackers, her lawyers said last week.
“She is committed to attending in person the trial and to confronting those who attacked her. She will do so with dignity and courage,” her French lawyers Leonor Hennerick and Jonathan Mattout told AFP.