In October 2016, reality star Kim Kardashian was brutally robbed at gunpoint by five masked assailants while staying at a luxury hotel in Paris. On Monday, nearly nine years after the traumatic incident, Kardashian is expected to testify at the Assize Court in Paris, according to a statement by her attorney, Michael Rhodes, to the French news agency AFP.
“We can confirm that Ms. Kardashian will be testifying in person at the upcoming French criminal trial involving the 2016 incident in which she was bound and robbed at gunpoint by a number of masked assailants,” Rhodes said.
Ahead of what is expected to be widely covered testimony, we revisited the harrowing details of that night, alongside eyewitness accounts, including dramatic testimony from one of the robbers, Yunice Abbas, who later admitted he had no idea who his victim was.
In early October 2016, Kardashian arrived in Paris for Fashion Week and stayed at the luxurious Hôtel de Pourtalès in the heart of the city. At 2:18 a.m., hotel surveillance footage captured three men arriving on bicycles; four minutes later, two more joined them.
According to sources close to Kardashian, she had returned to the hotel, wrapped herself in a robe, and was lying on the bed when at least two men entered through a glass door. Seeing that one wore a mask and the other a police cap, Kardashian realized something was wrong and tried to call her sister Kourtney Kardashian’s bodyguard. One of the intruders swiftly knocked the phone from her hands.
The robbers then grabbed her, bound her hands, tied her ankles and carried her into the bathroom. A source close to Kardashian said she feared she was about to be raped and murdered, pleading for her life and telling the attackers she had two young children at home.
The thieves, worried her screams might alert others, gagged her and quickly began searching for valuables. According to the source, Kardashian later recounted that the robbers spoke only French but repeatedly used one English word: "Ring." They were after the $4.5 million engagement ring given to her by Kanye West just days earlier. In addition to the ring, they stole a jewelry box filled with other valuables, bringing the total haul to around $10 million.
A friend of Kardashian, sleeping on the lower floor of the suite, sensed something was wrong, locked herself in the bathroom and called Kourtney’s bodyguard, who arrived at the scene just two minutes after the robbers fled. By then, Kardashian had managed to free herself and call for help.
French police believe the robbers had inside assistance, given their precise timing — knowing when Kardashian would be without bodyguards — and their ability to access her room without interference.
Kardashian’s then-husband, Kanye West, was onstage at a concert when he received the devastating news. He immediately canceled the show and rushed back to be with his wife, later canceling several more planned performances. Kardashian, along with her mother Kris Jenner and sisters Kourtney and Kendall, returned to the United States shortly after.
The call to the Paris police station came shortly after 3 a.m.—a routine hour for emergency calls. But according to Paris Police Chief Christian Sainte, this call was anything but routine. "Kim Kardashian, victim of V.M.A.," the officer told him—V.M.A. meaning vol à main armée, armed robbery—jolting Sainte awake.
Sainte, who had taken charge of the station two years earlier, admitted he didn’t immediately recognize Kardashian's name. “I asked my number two, ‘Who is this victim?'” recalled Sainte, noting that even the night shift officer was unfamiliar with her. "I got out of bed, went to my computer, Googled 'Kim Kardashian,' and I quickly understood who she is. Now I know almost everything about her," he said.
In an interview with Vanity Fair later that year, Sainte noted that Paris had been experiencing a surge in robberies at the time. Banks had become impenetrable, and armored truck heists were nearly impossible. Thieves found a new solution—home invasions—targeting wealthy individuals in their residences and stealing jewelry, valuables and cash. “Old, rich people are very vulnerable,” said the chief. “Or business owners, restaurant owners, who have cash at home. It’s quick. And you can get a lot of money in a very short time.”
Home invaders had a clear method: separate residents, confine them to different rooms, tie them up and demand to know where valuables were hidden. "In a country where it is quite difficult to find guns, the rope is one of the most dangerous weapons a criminal can use," said French author Jean-Baptiste Roca, who revealed that his own sister-in-law had suffered a similar ordeal.
Marc Piasecki, a paparazzi photographer who had closely followed Kardashian’s movements in Paris, noted that she had shared detailed updates about her visit on social media, including a photo of the $4.5 million diamond ring given to her by Kanye West just days earlier.
"I asked the chief, 'Were the thieves following her on social media?'" Piasecki recalled. However, it was later reported that the gang of thieves was largely amateur and had no idea who Kardashian was or about her online presence.
The robbers arrived on bicycles—an important detail, according to veteran police reporter Frédéric Ploquin. "The Hôtel de Pourtalès is in the center of Paris, where there are a lot of CCTV cameras. But on a bike you can ride the small streets, where there are no cameras," Plouqin says, explaining that without license plates and looking mostly the same, bicycles can be easily destroyed or hidden. Sainte confirmed: "This is the first occurrence of a bicycle being used in a major robbery."
Police found Kardashian alongside the hotel’s night receptionist, who was tied up and visibly shaken. Benjamin Dargent, an editor at Closer magazine, reported at the time that the receptionist was terrified of what Kardashian might think of him — and it seemed his fears were justified.
Days after the robbery, Kardashian told police the clerk appeared "very calm" during the robbery — a description that sparked internal debate. Did it mean uncaring or, worse, “afraid”? Either way, the night receptionist was “a bit upset about what they wrote,” says Dargent. “He told me that he was calm because he was held at gunpoint, and it was his way to save his life and Kim’s life.”
Unable to reach Kardashian directly, the receptionist asked Dargent to publish a letter he wrote to her:
“Dear Kim, when you feel the cold steel of a gun at your neck, it’s the moment when remaining calm can mean the difference between life and death, both our lives. I hope you are feeling better," he wrote, signing the letter with a pseudonym — "The Night" — likely out of lingering fear of the robbers.
The man known as "The Night" — a 39-year-old from northern Algeria using only the name Abdulrahman who had lived through Algeria’s violent civil war and knew the horrors of death all too well — later left his hotel job and gave multiple interviews. "What pushed me to go before the media was the enormous amount of false speculations, which did not stop, and especially that they were directed at Kim, accusing her of inciting the incident for insurance purposes," he told reporters.
In an interview with Entertainment Tonight, Abdulrahman said that three men appeared at the glass door of the Hôtel de Pourtalès. Abdulrahman, thinking their all-black garb indicated they were French police, opened the door, and quickly there was a pistol at his back and cuffs on his wrists.
“Where are the security cameras?” one of them asked, to which Abdulrahman responded that there weren’t any. “Are you kidding me?” the thief replied, then asked how many rooms were in the hotel, and if any had safes. Told there were 11 residences, the robber said, “Oh, that is nice—we will do them all.”
“They were not professional at all,” Abdulrahman added of the thieves, whose ages he estimated as between 40 and 50. “They were confused. They were improvising… They told me, ‘Don’t panic. We’re here for money.’”
They inquired about Kanye West. “I told him, ‘The rapper is not here,’ and he was upset, like, ‘Don’t play with me like this. I mean, the wife of the rapper,’” recalled the night receptionist.
The robbers decided to hit the Sky Penthouse first, where Kim was awake in bed in a white bathrobe, alone. Her longtime bodyguard, Pascal Duvier, who had been at her side throughout Fashion Week, had been sent off to guard Kourtney and their half-sister, Kendall Jenner, at L’Arc Paris, a nightclub that doesn’t get started until after one A.M.
According to the receptionist, the robbers led him to Kim’s door, opened it — it had no deadbolt — and he heard Kim call out, asking if someone was there. They didn’t answer. Instead, they rushed in, and as she screamed, one of them pulled her from the bed.
“He attacked her, holding his gun in her face,” Abdulrahman has said. “She was crying, she was screaming, saying, ‘Don’t kill me, I have babies, don’t kill me, please, I have babies! I’m a mom! Take whatever you want!’ She was wearing a white bathrobe and her hair was tied up.” A letter from her attorney Martin Singer to the Huffington Post, obtained by TMZ, said that both Kim and the concierge “believed they might be killed at any moment.”
“I tried to calm her because the guy was crazy,” Abdulrahman told Entertainment Tonight. “He was screaming, and also Kim was screaming, and he told me to shut up. I told her, ‘Shut up, shut up, please calm down.’”
“When I tried to calm her, she asked me, ‘Are we going to die?’” he said. “I told her, ‘I don’t know.’”
“D’argent! D’argent! D’argent!” the thieves demanded: Some money! Some money! Some money!
But Kardashian West had only around $1,000 in euros.
“She believed that he was there for the ring,” Abdulrahman told Inside Edition, and she handed one of them her 20-karat diamond ring. “He takes it like this [he pantomimed the thief examining the ring, dismissively] and said, ‘It’s nice,’” and put it in his pocket.
"We had nothing against [Kardashian] personally," Abbas said. "As De Niro would say, it's business."
The thieves bound Kim’s wrists and ankles, repeatedly asking her for money. After she began screaming, according to Abdulrahman’s account in the Daily Mail, one thief taped her mouth shut with “a long piece of tape, all the way around her head,” and she was carried into the bathroom, where she was placed on the floor.
They were apparently ready to move on to the other 10 residences, but Kim’s cell phone lit up with a call from Pascal Duvier. “I told them, ‘You know who is ringing now? It is her bodyguard. If she doesn’t answer, he will come with police.’”
The job was cut short, and the thieves left with a score beyond their wildest imaginings: the 20-carat diamond ring and a jewelry box containing 12 other items—whose total value has been estimated at $5.6 million. Having been in the building for only 49 minutes, they departed, several on their bicycles, some exposing their faces to an adjacent business’s security camera. “The bag with the jewelry hangs from the handlebars of one of the thugs… The bag appears to contain Kim Kardashian’s stolen jewels,” reported Le Parisien
Police arrived at the scene just minutes later, and by that morning, Kardashian had already left Paris.
Earlier this month, a revealing interview was published with one of Kim Kardashian’s robbers, Yunice Abbas, who shared his story in an interview translated from French and published by the Daily Mail. Abbas, 72, is preparing for trial and recalled how, on the night of the heist, he had no idea the target was Kardashian. He recounted how, after leaving the hotel, he encountered police officers, nodded at them and kept cycling.
He just "kept pedaling" until the unclosed bag of loot slipped and became caught in the front wheel. Jewels scattered everywhere, Abbas said, and he scrambled to collect what he could from the ground.
In the end, he revealed, he earned just 70,000 euros (£60,000 today) from the job – much less than he had been promised. He knows there is a "good chance" he will end up in prison, but is "trying not to think about it.'"
The 72-year-old is one of 12 defendants who will stand trial next week for their roles in the heist. Though he didn’t earn the payout he expected, Abbas capitalized on the notoriety, authoring a book titled I Kidnapped Kim Kardashian. "We're all robbers. We all have a record," he told TF1 in an interview published on Sunday.
Police sources confirmed that the robbers had specifically heard about Kardashian’s 20-carat diamond ring, which sparked the heist plot. Aomar Aït Khedache, believed to be the gang’s leader, proudly claimed credit for orchestrating the robbery and was nicknamed "Old Omar" in the French media.
"None of them had much idea who Kim was, but they liked her very expensive bling," a police investigator said.
"We had nothing against [Kardashian] personally," Abbas said. "As De Niro would say, it's business." Abbas does have some regret that "we scared her."
Now, the so-called "Grandpa Robbers" are expected to appear in court, alongside Kardashian, who will give her long-awaited testimony. The trial is scheduled to begin on April 28 and conclude by May 23.
According to a Daily Mail report published in December, Paris police have yet to fully solve the case and have not apprehended all those involved.
