One of the suspects in Armed Theft of the reality TV star Kim Kardashian said he regretted the “trauma” he had caused him almost nine years after Kardashian was linked, gagged and stolen under the threat of a firearm during the Paris Fashion Week in October 2016.
The flight was considered the greatest robbery targeting an individual that Paris had seen for decades. The jury of six citizens will organize the trial, as well as three magistrates – a procedure in France reserved for the most serious crimes.
The defendant Yunice Abbas said that it was the first time that he really recognized the “trauma” that he had caused Kardashian, while the trial began on Tuesday in the procedure against 10 people accused as part of the 2016 flight, where more than $ 10 million in jewelry was stolen.
“I regret it, not because I was caught, but because … there was a trauma,” said Abbas, 72, at the jury.
The defendant Yunice Abbas arrives for the start of the trial for the flight and removal of the American fame Kim Kardashian at the Court of Assisi de Paris, on April 28, 2025.
Magali Cohen / Hans Lucas / AFP via Getty Images
Abbas was the first of several accused who to testify in the trial and had previously confessed his role in crime in his book in 2021, entitled I kidnapped Kim Kardashianwhich appeared during the testimony.
He said he was not responsible for the title of the book and said he was not involved in the Kardashian attachment during the flight, According to NBC News.
Abbas said he had acted as a belvedere at the reception on the ground floor, ensuring that the escape road was clear. He said that he was not armed and that he did not personally threaten Kardashian, but recognized that he was sharing the responsibility of 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 “grandfather” in local media because of their age, would have played different roles in robbery.
According to Abbas, a few minutes after the start of the raid, his accomplices came down from Kardashian’s apartment and gave him a bag of jewelry.
While fleeing the premises on a bike, he saw a police car, but the police were not yet aware of the flight. Abbas said that by bicycle, the bag containing the jewelry was taken in the front wheel and it fell on the ground, overthrowing the contents of the bag.
“I picked up the jewelry and I left,” he said.
The next morning, a passer -by found a cross inlaid with diamonds in the street and gave it to the police. It was the only jewel of the flight that was recovered.
Abbas said he did not know the identity of Kardashian at the time of the flight.
“I was told about a famous person, the woman of a rapper. This is all the information I had,” he said. “Until the next morning, when I heard on television about the influencer. It was then that I understood who she was.”
During the interrogation on Tuesday, Abbas spoke of his criminal past, including an armed robbery of a bank in Belgium. He said that when he was younger, he was opposed to theft, but then turned to a crime life due to the bad influences of friends and the difficulties of money.
He said that he “had never had a model” and had done what he thought he had to do to support the needs of his children.
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In the years that followed the theft, Abbas said that he now felt “very uncomfortable” about what happened that day, adding: “I can do nothing but apologize.”
In her story to the investigators, Kardashian described two men who made his way in his room in a complex of private apartments in Paris and pointing a weapon towards her, asking her ring. She said that she was attached with plastic cables and adhesive tape while the intruders were looking for jewelry, including her engagement ring worth millions of dollars.
Twelve people were originally expected in the defendant box. One is dead and another is seriously ill and cannot be tried. According to the investigation, five of the 10 accused were present at the scene of the flight.
Others expected, notably the alleged leader, Aomar Aomar, 68, Aït Khedache; his son Harminy, 37, who is accused of being the getaway driver; Didier Dubreucq, 69, known as “Blue Eyes”, who is the second alleged thief suspected of having entered the apartment; And Christiane Glutin, 78, who should be judged as an accomplice in the robbery.
This court sketch made on April 28, 2025 shows the defendants Aomar Ait Khedache (C, Front), François Delaporte (R, UP), Florus Heroui (2nd R, UP) and Christianne Glutin (4th T, UP) during the 2016 flight trial and removal of us, the celebrity Kim Kardashian at the Court of Assize in Paris, April 28, 2025.
Benoit Peyrucq / AFP via Getty Images
The brother of the Kardashian driver in Paris, Gary Madar, 35, should also be tried. He is accused of having turned the others on the site of Kardashian.
The defendant Gary Madar during the 2016 flight trial and the kidnapping of the American celebrity Kim Kardashian at the Paris Court of Assisi, April 28, 2025.
Magali Cohen / Hans Lucas / AFP via Getty Images
Kardashian, 44, is expected to testify in person during the trial, scheduled until May 23. Her lawyers said she would testify in person and should speak on May 13.
“Ms. Kardashian reserves her testimony for the court and the jury and does not wish to develop more for the moment,” they said. “It has great respect and great admiration for the French judicial system and has been dealt with with great respect by the French authorities.”
In the interviews and in the reality show of her family, she described to be terrified as thieves pointed to her weapon. She said she thought she was going to be raped and killed.
In March 2017 on Follow the Kardashians, The mother of four theorized that a group of men followed her family all the trip to Paris and admitted that she was ennail that evening, making her disciples know that everyone was going out, including her bodyguard Pascal Duvier, and that she would be alone.
“What I think has happened now after having thought so much about it is that there was probably a group of guys who followed us all the trip. I was a snapchatting that I was at home and that everyone was going out.
“They had this window of opportunity and went there,” she said.
She explained that she fell into her room when she heard the stairs beat. She thought it was her sister Kourtney and her assistant Stéphanie. She continued to call “hello” without getting an answer.
“Then at that time, when there was no answer, my heart started to become really tense, like your stomach like a little nodes, and you say to yourself:” Ok, what is happening? “” She said. “I knew something was wrong.”
She told her sisters what had happened after the entrance to the armed thieves.
“I saw two guys hold another guy in police uniforms, just outside my room, five feet away. So I slipped my bed and picked up my phone, and I say to myself: “I don’t know how to call 911 in another country”. So I called Pascal, then the guy entered, I caught the phone and threw myself on the bed.
She says that she recognized the concierge, who was handcuffed, holding the key to her room.
“What I heard about (the concierge) later, they said:” Where is the rapper’s wife? Leave us her room “” she said.
“He caught my legs – I did not have clothes under there – and he pulled me towards him at the front of the bed and I thought:” Ok, that’s the time he will rape me “,” said the founder of Skims during his interview.
“I prepared myself mentally and he did not do it. He stuck my legs together and then they had the pistol towards me, I knew that it was the moment when they were totally going into my head. ”
Kardashian’s lawyer Michael Rhodes said that the reality TV star and the entrepreneur wanted the trial “to be ordered in accordance with French law and with respect for all parties to the case”.
– With files from the Associated Press
