Kim Kardashian, the reality TV star and entrepreneur, told a Paris court on Tuesday that she had feared for her life as thieves held her at gunpoint during a robbery in the French capital nearly a decade ago.
“I absolutely did think I was going to die,” said Ms. Kardashian, who was composed as she recalled her ordeal for the court but briefly teared up several times.
It was the only time that Ms. Kardashian, 44, was expected to take the stand and face the defendants French reporters have nicknamed “grandpa robbers” — a group, some of whom are in their 60s and 70s, accused of stealing millions worth of jewelry from her during Paris Fashion Week in October 2016. Prosecutors have described them as career criminals.
Ms. Kardashian spoke about the confusion and terror that gripped her after two of the thieves, dressed as police officers, entered her room and asked in accented English for her $4 million diamond engagement ring. One held a gun to her back at one point, she said, and she feared they might rape or shoot her.
When the robbers fled, she said, they left her on her bathroom floor, gagged and bound with tape and zip ties. She described freeing her hands by rubbing the tape against the metal leg of a sink, before hopping downstairs with her ankles still bound.
The ordeal shattered her sense of safety, leading her to drastically upgrade her private security, she testified. “It really changed everything,” she said.
The courthouse in central Paris buzzed with unusual activity on Tuesday because of Ms. Kardashian’s presence.
From dawn, scores of journalists and curious onlookers had lined up to get into the courtroom and sit in the public gallery. Under French law, cameras are not allowed in the court, but teenagers snapped selfies in the courthouse’s marble hallways as they waited.
Theo Chbouki, an 18-year-old fashion student in the line, said that it was his first time attending a criminal trial and that he was curious to see Ms. Kardashian in a “serious” real-life setting, without the glossy veneer of social media or reality TV.
“It’s iconic to see Kim Kardashian at a trial in Paris,” he said.
People craned their necks as Ms. Kardashian entered the courtroom alongside her mother. She had her hair in a bun, and wore a long black skirt, a black jacket and a diamond necklace.
Ms. Kardashian, testifying about messages she sent on Snapchat and comments she made on her reality TV show about the case, stood in stark contrast to the defendants. The accused, nine men and one woman, were born long before the age of social media, and some of them are suffering from the ailments of old age.
“I am formally and sincerely sorry,” one 72-year-old defendant told Ms. Kardashian, his hand trembling from Parkinson’s disease. The defendant, Yunice Abbas, has said that he was a lookout during the robbery, and is one of two at the trial who have acknowledged involvement.
Some of the defendants have been charged with armed robbery in an organized gang, kidnapping and other charges. Others are accused of complicity or of lesser charges. The trial, which will be decided by three judges and a six-person jury, is set to last until the end of May.
Simone Harouche, a friend of Ms. Kardashian who was her fashion stylist at the time — and who was the only other person in the residence with the reality TV star that night — recalled falling asleep and then being startled awake by Ms. Kardashian screaming that she had children and that she wanted to live.
“It was a sound that I had never heard from Kim — it was terror,” said Ms. Harouche. Her room was a floor below Ms. Kardashian.
At the time, the stolen jewelry was estimated to be worth at least 8 million euros, or about $9 million. Prosecutors believe that the thieves targeted Ms. Kardashian because she had displayed some of her jewelry on social media, where she has millions of followers.
“Nothing that she posts is in real time anymore,” Ms. Harouche said.
The presiding judge also read out a letter addressed to Ms. Kardashian by another of the defendants, Aomar Aït Khedache, 69, whose DNA was found at the crime scene but who rejects accusations that he was the ringleader.
Mr. Khedache, who has a hearing impairment and is following the trial through typed transcripts, expressed regret in the letter, which he had initially sent in 2017, although Ms. Kardashian had not seen it at the time.
In response, Ms. Kardashian said, “I’ve always believed in second chances,” noting that she has campaigned for prison reform.
“But I also fight for victims who have been through horrific crimes,” she added.
“I forgive you for what had taken place,” she said, tearfully addressing Mr. Khedache. “But it doesn’t change the emotion, and the feelings, and the trauma, and the ways that my life is forever changed.”
Aurelien Breeden is a reporter for The Times in Paris, covering news from France.
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