Paris — After a month-long trial, eight of the ten people accused of robbing billionaire celebrity Kim Kardashian in Paris in 2016 were convicted on Friday.
The ringleader and seven other people involved in the heist were found guilty, but will not return to prison. The court acquitted two defendants who were accused of handing out information about Kardashian’s whereabouts.
Aomar Aït Khedache, 69, the ringleader, was handed the heaviest sentence of eight years imprisonment. Five of those years are a suspended sentence. Due to time already served in jail, he will not return to detention.
Three others who were accused of the most serious charges — Yunis Abbas, Didier Dubreucq, and Marc-Alexandre Boyer — each got seven years, five of them suspended. Like Khedache, they will not return to detention.
Prosecutors had called for the four to face 10-year sentences. The chief judge, David De Pas, said the ages of the defendants — the oldest is 79 and some others are in their 60s and 70s — weighed on the court’s decision not to impose harsher sentences that would have sent them to jail. He said the nine years between the robbery and the trial were also taken into account in the sentencing. Still, he said that Kardashian had been traumatized by the robbery in her hotel.
“You caused harm,” he said. “You caused fear.”
Reuters/Piroschka van de Wouw 
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.
Kardashian, who was not present for the sentencing, said in a statement that she was “deeply grateful to the French authorities for pursuing justice” in the case. In court, lawyers for Kardashian said the reality star was “satisfied” with the verdict.
“The crime was the most terrifying experience of my life, leaving a lasting impact on me and my family,” she said in her statement. “While I’ll never forget what happened, I believe in the power of growth and accountability and pray for healing for all.”
The ten accused have been known in France as les papys braqueurs, or the “Grandpa robbers,” because of their ages. Some arrived in court in orthopedic shoes and Khedache, now deaf and largely mute, leaned on a cane. Khedache and Abbas, who previously admitted to their parts in the robbery, apologized to Kardashian and the court before their sentencing and conviction.
In a scribbled note to the court, Khedache offered “a thousand apologies.” He also apologized to his son, Harminy Aït Khedache, 38, who was a driver for the gang that night. Khedache’s DNA, found on the bands used to bind Kardashian, was a key breakthrough that helped crack open the case. Wiretaps captured him giving orders, recruiting accomplices and arranging to sell the diamonds in Belgium. A diamond-encrusted cross, dropped during the escape, was the only piece of jewelry ever recovered.
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.
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