Eight people were found guilty by a court in Paris on Friday in connection with a brazen robbery against Kim Kardashian nearly a decade ago.
Ms. Kardashian, 44, a reality TV star and entrepreneur, was gagged, bound with zip ties and robbed at gunpoint of jewelry worth millions of dollars at a luxury residence she had rented during Paris Fashion Week in October 2016.
Seven men and one woman were convicted on charges ranging from direct involvement in the robbery to complicity in it. The court sentenced them to three to eight years in prison — far less than what the prosecution had requested — with the sentences mostly or entirely suspended. Counting time already served, none of the defendants will return to prison.
”The sentences are fairly lenient,” David De Pas, the presiding judge, acknowledged as he read the ruling, citing the advanced age and health issues of many of the defendants as one of the main reasons. Even so, he added, “you did harm.”
The court found a ninth defendant guilty of illegally acquiring and possessing firearms but cleared him of involvement in the robbery. A 10th defendant, Gary Madar, the brother of Ms. Kardashian’s driver at the time of the heist, was acquitted on the grounds that there was not enough evidence against him. Prosecutors had accused him of being a “mole” who had given the robbers information about Ms. Kardashian’s schedule.
Reporters had nicknamed the main suspects in the case the “grandpa robbers” — a group of grizzled criminals, most of whom are now in their 60s and 70s, who were accused of staging one of the most daring celebrity heists in France’s recent history.
Ms. Kardashian, who did not attend the hearing on Friday, testified this month that she had feared for her life during the robbery and that it had pushed her to sharply upgrade her private security and to scale back the amount of personal, real-time information that she posted online.
Ms. Kardashian’s lawyers said she was satisfied with the court’s ruling.
“I am deeply grateful to the French authorities for pursuing justice in this case,” Ms. Kardashian said in a statement. “The crime was the most terrifying experience of my life, leaving a lasting impact on me and my family. While I’ll never forget what happened, I believe in the power of growth and accountability and pray for healing for all.”
Ms. Kardashian, who completed a legal apprenticeship this week that makes her eligible to take the California bar exam, has campaigned for prison reform.
Most of her stolen jewelry, including a $4 million diamond engagement ring from her husband at the time, was not recovered. It was estimated to be worth at least eight million euros, or about $9 million. The final estimate is unclear, but Ms. Kardashian told the court the insurance payout she received was about $6 million.
Of the 10 defendants — eight men ages 35 to 72 and one woman age 79 — only two had acknowledged their involvement.
One was Aomar Aït Khedache, 69, whose DNA was found at the scene but who denied accusations that he had masterminded the robbery by recruiting accomplices, giving orders and arranging to sell the stolen diamonds in Belgium. The court agreed with the prosecution and sentenced him to eight years in prison, with most of that suspended.
The other was Yunice Abbas, 72, who acted as a lookout and later wrote a book about the heist. He was sentenced to seven years in prison, with most of that suspended.
Lawyers for the oldest defendants had urged the court to be lenient in its sentencing, arguing that there was no risk of their committing further crimes and that forcing the men to spend the rest of their lives behind bars was unnecessarily cruel given their ailments.
Stenographers transcribed the court proceedings on a screen for Mr. Khedache, who has a severe hearing impairment and who was often mobbed by photographers and camera crews as he hobbled through the courthouse’s marble hallways with a cane.
Mr. Abbas’s hands shook from Parkinson’s disease when he spoke in court. Another defendant, Didier Dubreucq, 69, was absent from court several times to undergo chemotherapy for cancer. One person charged in the case had died, and another was too ill to be tried.
The prosecution argued that the defendants were not harmless retirees but career criminals who had carefully prepared their heist and had shown no empathy for Ms. Kardashian or for the residence’s night watchman, who was forced to lead the robbers to her apartment.
“Today, they are being presented as small-time crooks,” Anne-Dominique Merville, the prosecutor in the case, told the court this week. But they were “seasoned robbers” with extensive criminal records, she said, as she told the three judges and six-person jury not to trust the defendants’ “reassuring wrinkles.”
Aurelien Breeden is a reporter for The Times in Paris, covering news from France.
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