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In October 2016, Kim Kardashian was robbed at gunpoint – with jewellery worth millions of dollars stolen during the audacious heist in Paris.

It was the biggest robbery of an individual in France for more than 20 years – and made front pages around the world.

Now, almost a decade on, the case is finally coming to court.

Why has it taken so long? Will Kardashian give evidence? And who exactly are the “grandpa robbers” facing trial?

Here’s everything you need to know.

Pic: Rex Features
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Kardashian at the Siran Presentation on the day of the robbery. Pic: Rex Features

What happened?

Two years after Kardashian and rapper Kanye West tied the knot in an ostentatious week-long celebration spanning Paris and Florence, the Kardashian-West clan were back in the French capital for Paris Fashion Week.

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Her then husband had returned to the US to pick up his Saint Pablo tour – but Kardashian, along with her sister Kourtney and various members of their entourage, remained in Paris, staying in an exclusive set of apartments so discreet they’ve been dubbed the No Address Hotel.

Nestled on Tronchet Street, just a stone’s throw from Place de l’Opéra, and close to the fashionable Avenue Montaigne, the Hotel de Pourtalès is popular with A-list stars staying in the French capital.

A stay in the Sky Penthouse, the suite occupied by Kardashian, will currently set you back about £13,000 a night.

Kardashian was staying at the Hotel de Pourtales
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Kardashian was staying at the Hotel de Pourtales

On the evening of 3 October, after attending a fashion show with her sister, Kardashian remained in the apartment alone while the rest of her convoy – including her bodyguard Pascal Duvier – went out for the night.

At about 2.30am, three armed men wearing ski masks and dressed as police forced their way into the apartment block – and according to investigators, they threatened the concierge at gunpoint.

Two of them are alleged to have forced the concierge to lead them to Kardashian’s suite. He later told police they yelled at him: “Where’s the rapper’s wife?”

Kardashian said she had been “dozing” on her bed when the men then entered her room.

She has said she believes her social media posts provided the alleged robbers with “a window of opportunity”.

“I was Snapchatting that I was home, and that everyone was going out,” she said in the months after the incident.

The Keeping Up With The Kardashians star vividly described the attack in a police report, as reported in the French weekly paper Le Journal du Dimanche.

“They grabbed me and took me into the hallway. They tied me up with plastic cables and taped my hands, then they put tape over my mouth and my legs.”

She said they pointed a gun at her, asking specifically for her ring and also for money.

Police guard the entrance to the building where Kim has been staying
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Police guard the entrance to the Hotel de Pourtalès the day after the robbery

Kardashian says they carried her into the bathroom and put her in the bathtub. She said she was wearing only a bathrobe at the time.

She had initially thought the robbers “were terrorists who had come to kidnap me”, according to a French police report taken in New York three months after the robbery.

Kardashian told officers: “I thought I was going to die.”

According to police, the robbers – who left the room after grabbing their haul, escaped on bicycles with items estimated to be worth about $10m (£7.5m), including a $4m (£3m) 18.88-carat diamond engagement ring from West.

After they had left, Kardashian said she escaped her restraints and went to find help. After speaking to detectives, she immediately returned to the US on a private jet and later hired a completely new security team.

Kim Kardashian shows off a ring on Instagram
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Kardashian shows off her $4m ring on Instagram

What was stolen?

As well as her engagement ring, Kardashian said the thieves took her large Louis Vuitton jewellery box, which she said contained “everything I owned”.

In police reports given to the French authorities at about 4.30am on the night of the alleged robbery, Kardashian listed these items as having been stolen:

• Two diamond Cartier bracelets
• A gold and diamond Jacob necklace
• Diamond earrings by Lauren Schwartz
• Yanina earrings
• Three gold Jacob necklaces
• Little bracelets, jewels and rings
• A Lauren Schwartz diamond necklace
• A necklace with six little diamonds
• A necklace with Saint spelt out in diamonds
• A cross-shaped diamond-encrusted Jacob cross
• A yellow gold Rolex watch
• Two yellow gold rings
• An iPhone 6 and a BlackBerry

Police recovered only the diamond-encrusted cross that was dropped by the robbers while leaving.

It’s likely the gold in the haul was melted down and resold, while the diamond engagement ring that is now so associated with the robbery would be far too recognisable to sell on the open market.

Kardashian at the Siran Presentation on the day of the robbery. Pic: Rex Features
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Kardashian at the Siran Presentation on the day of the robbery. Pic: Rex Features

What will happen in court?

The hearing will begin at the Court of Appeal of Paris – the largest appeals court in France – on 28 April and is scheduled to last a month.

It will consist of a presiding judge, two professional assessors, and six main jurors.

The hearing involves more than 2,000 documents and there are four civil parties.

Kardashian at the Balenciaga show on the day of the robbery. Pic: Rex Features
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Kardashian at the Balenciaga show on the day of the robbery. Pic: Rex Features

Who is being tried?

There were initially 12 defendants in the case, but one person has died and another has a medical condition that prevents their involvement. This means 10 people – nine men and one woman – are standing trial.

Five of them, who were all aged between 60 and 72 at the time of the incident, face armed robbery and kidnapping charges. They are:

• Yunice Abbas
• Aomar Ait Khedache
• Harminv Ait Khedache
• Didier Dubreucq
• Marc-Alexandre Boyer

Abbas, 72, has admitted his participation in the robbery. In 2021, he published a book about the robbery, titled I Kidnapped Kim Kardashian. In 2021, a court ruled he would not benefit financially from the book.

Aomar Ait Khedache, 69, known to French crime reporters as “Old Omar”, has also admitted participating in the heist but denies the prosecution’s accusation that he was the ringleader.

The remaining five defendants are charged with complicity in the heist or the unauthorised possession of a weapon. They are:

• Florus Heroui
• Gary Mader
• Christiane Glotin
• François Delaporte
• Marc Boyer

Among those, Mader was a VIP greeter who worked for the car company Kardashian used in Paris, and Heroui was a bar manager who allegedly passed on information about Kardashian’s movements.

With many of the accused now ageing and with various serious health conditions, and some having spent time in jail following their arrest, all are currently free under judicial supervision.

If found guilty, those accused of the more serious crimes could face 10 years to life imprisonment.

Pic: Rex Features
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Kardashian at the Off-White show three days before the robbery. Pic: Rex Features

Will Kardashian give evidence?

Yes.

Lawyer Michael Rhodes said Kardashian has “tremendous appreciation and admiration for the French judicial system” and “wishes for the trial to proceed in an orderly fashion in accordance with French law and with respect for all parties to the case”.

A trainee lawyer herself, Kardashian has become a high-profile criminal justice advocate in the US in recent years.

(R-L)Kanye West, Kim Kardashian, Kourtney Kardashian, Kris Jenner. Pic: Rex Features
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(R-L) Kanye West, Kim Kardashian, Kourtney Kardashian, Kris Jenner in the front row three days before the robbery. Pic: Rex Features

Why has it taken so long to come to court?

There was initially a manhunt after the robbery, with French police under pressure to prove that Paris’s security was not in question.

Just the year before in 2015, the capital had been shaken by terrorist attacks by Islamic militants, in which 130 people were killed, including 90 at a music event at the Bataclan theatre.

French police initially arrested 17 people in the Kardashian case in January 2017 – three months after the robbery – assisted by DNA traces found on plastic bands used to tie her wrists. Twelve people were later charged.

It was ordered to be sent to trial in 2021 – at a time when limited court proceedings were happening due to multiple COVID lockdowns, and France was holding its largest ever criminal trial over the November 2015 terror attacks.

Kardashian at the Givenchy show on the day of the robbery. Pic: Rex Features
Image:
Kardashian at the Givenchy show on the day of the robbery. Pic: Rex Features

What has Kardashian said about the incident?

Kardashian has described the robbery as a “life-changing” moment. She took three weeks away from filming her reality TV show Keeping Up With the Kardashians, and took a three-month break from social media.

In a March 2017 episode titled Paris, Kardashian first spoke publicly about her ordeal.

She described first hearing a noise in her apartment, and calling out, thinking it was her sister and assistant: “At that moment when there wasn’t an answer, my heart started to get really tense. Like, you know, your stomach just kind of like, knots up and you’re like, ‘OK, what’s going on?’ I knew something wasn’t quite right.”

She went on: “They asked for money. I said, ‘I don’t have any money’. They dragged me out to the hallway on top of the stairs. That’s when I saw the gun, clear as day. I was looking at the gun, looking down back at the stairs. I was like, I have a split second in my mind to make this quick decision.

“Either they’re going to shoot me in the back or if I make it [down the stairs] and the elevator does not open in time or the stairs are locked, there’s no way out.”

Three months later, she told a Forbes Power Women’s Summit she had changed her approach to posting on social media: “They had followed my moves on social media, and they knew my every move and what I had.”

She added: “It was definitely a huge, huge, huge lesson for me to not show off some of the things that I have. It was a huge lesson to me to not show off where I go.

“It’s just changed my whole life, but I think for the better.”

West and Kardashian at the Off-White show three days before the robbery. Pic: Rex Features
Image:
West and Kardashian at the Off-White show three days before the robbery. Pic: Rex Features

In October 2020, Kardashian told US interviewer David Letterman she feared she would be raped and murdered during the heist, and that her sister had been at the forefront of her mind during the incident.

Speaking on My Next Guest Needs No Introduction, Kardashian said: “I kept on thinking about Kourtney, I kept on thinking she’s going to come home and I’m going to be dead in the room and she’s going to be traumatised for the rest of her life if she sees me… I thought that was my fate.”

When speaking to French police about the impact the robbery had had on her three months after it, Kardashian said: “I think that my perception of jewellery now is that I am not as attached to it as I used to be. I don’t have the same feeling about it. In fact, I even think that it has become a bit of a burden to have the responsibility of such expensive jewels.

“There is nothing of sentimental value to compare with the act of going home and finding one’s children and one’s family.”

She went on to describe Paris as “not the right place” for her, and didn’t return to the French capital for two years following the robbery.

Kardashian has since said in a 2023 episode of Keeping Up With The Kardashians that she did not purchase any jewellery in the seven years following the robbery, kept no jewellery at her home and only wore items that are either borrowed or fake.

She said the realisation that material items don’t matter has made her “a completely different person in the best way”.

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Snoop Dogg becomes co-owner and investor of Swansea football club saying it’s ‘an underdog just like me’

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Snoop Dogg becomes co-owner and investor of Swansea football club saying it's 'an underdog just like me'

Snoop Dogg has become a co-owner and investor of Swansea, with the US rapper hailing the Welsh football club as “an underdog that bites back, just like me”.

The former Premier League club, which plays in the English second tier, confirmed the US rapper and producer plans to use his own money to invest in it, Sky Sports reports, although it didn’t disclose financial details.

“My love of football is well known, but it feels special to me that I make my move into club ownership with Swansea City,” the music icon said in the announcement.

“The story of the club and the area really struck a chord with me,” he added. “This is a proud, working class city and club.

“An underdog that bites back, just like me.

“I’m proud to be part of Swansea City. I am going to do all I can to help the club.”

Swansea’s American owners, led by Brett Cravatt and Jason Cohen, are trying to grow the Championship club’s global brand and increase commercial revenue.

Snoop Dogg, 53, who has 89m followers on Instagram and more than 20m on X, helped launch the team’s 2025-26 home shirt last weekend.

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The club ownership group said: “To borrow a phrase from Snoop’s back catalogue, this announcement is the next episode for Swansea City as we seek to create new opportunities to boost the club’s reach and profile.”

Luka Modric, who recently signed with AC Milan from Real Madrid, joined Swansea’s ownership group in April.

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Police taking no further action after investigating Kneecap’s Glastonbury show

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Police taking no further action after investigating Kneecap's Glastonbury show

Police are taking no further action over Kneecap’s performance at Glastonbury.

Officers said they had investigated “comments about a forthcoming court case made during Kneecap’s performance” at the festival on 28 June.

However, after Crown Prosecution Service advice, they decided there is not enough evidence “to provide a realistic prospect of conviction for any offence”.

The Avon & Somerset force started investigating the Irish group’s show last month, as well as comments by punk-rap duo Bob Vylan.

It said they were looking at a possible public order incident.

Police said on Friday that the investigation into Bob Vylan’s performance was ongoing.

The London duo were widely criticised – and caused a BBC crisis – after leading on-stage chants of “death to the IDF” (Israel Defence Forces).

Kneecap's Liam Og O Hannaidh leaves Westminster Magistrates' Court in London
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Kneecap’s Liam Og O Hannaidh appeared at Westminster Magistrates’ Court in June. Pic: PA

Kneecap posted a photograph on Instagram, which the group said was an email from police announcing the case was being dropped.

They said their packed Glastonbury gig was a “celebration of love and solidarity” and reporting used “wildly misleading headlines”.

Fears over what Kneecap might do or say during the performance had prompted the BBC not to show it live.

The group said: “Every single person who saw our set knew no law was broken, not even close… yet the police saw fit to publicly announce they were opening an investigation.”

“There is no public apology, they don’t send this to media or post it on police accounts,” they added.

The police statement on Friday said they had informed Kneecap of their decision to drop the case.

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One of the group’s members appeared in court in June charged with a terror offence.

Liam Og O hAnnaidh is accused of displaying a flag in support of Hezbollah, a proscribed organisation in the UK, at a gig last year.

He was released on unconditional bail ahead of a second court appearance in August.

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Tomorrowland: ‘Devastating’ blaze destroys main stage at major festival – two days before it was due to begin

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Tomorrowland: 'Devastating' blaze destroys main stage at major festival - two days before it was due to begin

A huge fire has destroyed the main stage of a major festival in Belgium – two days before it was due to begin.

Tomorrowland is a dance music event as big as Glastonbury – and David Guetta was due to perform.

Footage showed flames and thick plumes of black smoke engulfing the stage and spreading to nearby woodland on Wednesday.

fire destroyed the main stage at the Tomorrowland festival site in Belgium
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The fire gutted the main stage


 fire which destroyed the main stage at the Tomorrowland festival site in Belgium
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Fire crews attempt to bring the blaze under control

The annual festival in the town of Boom, north of Brussels, is one of the biggest in Europe and attracts about 400,000 people over two consecutive weekends.

It is famous for its immersive and elaborate designs and attracts big names within dance music – including Guetta, best known for tracks When Love Takes Over and Titanium.

Dutch DJs Martin Garrix and Charlotte de Witte were also due to perform, along with the likes of Swedish House Mafia, Eric Prydz and Alok.

A fire destroyed the main stage at the Tomorrowland festival site in Belgium
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Black smoke could be seen rising into the sky


The festival’s website described the creative elements which went into the elaborate main stage.

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The theme, described as Orbyz, was “set in a magical universe made entirely out of ice” and “full of mythical creatures”.

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Organisers said no one was injured in the blaze but confirmed “our beloved main stage has been severely damaged”, adding they were “devastated”.

Spokesperson Debby Wilmsen added: “We received some truly terrible news today. A fire broke out on the Tomorrowland site … and our main stage was essentially destroyed there, which is truly awful.

“That’s a stage that took years to build, with so much love and passion. So I think a lot of people are devastated.”

Spokesperson Debby Wilmsen who said fire destroyed the main stage at the Tomorrowland festival site in Belgium
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Spokesperson Debby Wilmsen told reporters ‘a lot of people are devastated’

Despite the fire, Tomorrowland organisers said they were still expecting 38,000 festivalgoers at DreamVille, the event’s campsite.

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