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 over nearly five hours of testimony.
It was the only time that Ms. Kardashian, 44, was expected to take the stand and face the defendants. Reporters have nicknamed them “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.
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 her at gunpoint, 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 and to remove all jewelry from her home, 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. She wore a long black skirt, a black jacket and a $3 million diamond necklace.
From dawn, scores of journalists and curious onlookers had lined up to sit in the courtroom’s public gallery. Under French law, cameras are not allowed inside, but teenagers snapped selfies in the courthouse’s marble hallways and craned their necks when Ms. Kardashian entered the courtroom alongside her mother.
Theo Chbouki, an 18-year-old fashion student in the line, said that he had never attended a criminal trial before but 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.
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. Many of the accused, nine men and one woman, were born long before the age of social media. Some 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.
At the time, the stolen jewelry was estimated to be worth at least 8 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.
Prosecutors believe that the thieves targeted Ms. Kardashian because she had displayed her location and some of her jewelry to her millions of followers on social media, highlighting the pitfalls of online fame.
“I never thought in my wildest dreams that me posting something would be an invitation to take something,” Ms. Kardashian said, adding that she no longer posts in real time about her whereabouts.
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. Like Mr. Abbas, he faces face a life sentence.
Mr. Khedache, who has a hearing impairment, is following the trial through typed transcripts. He 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, who has campaigned for prison reform, said she believed in second chances but also wanted to fight for victims.
“I forgive you for what had taken place,” she said, addressing Mr. Khedache through tears. “But it doesn’t change the emotion, and the feelings, and the trauma, and the ways that my life is forever changed.”
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