Twelve people involved with a jewelry heist targeting Kim Kardashian in 2016 are set to stand trial according to Paris authorities. The brazen robbers took over $10 million in jewelry from the socialite when she was visiting The City of Light during fashion week. Kardashian stated she was tied up at gunpoint and locked in a bathroom after armed robbers forced their way into her rented Paris apartment.
The investigation has been going on for five years and investigating judges have ordered the case sent to trial, a justice official said Friday, Nov 19. According to the Associated Press, the 12 suspects face a range of charges related to the theft. No trial date has been set, and the official would not provide further details. Most of the jewelry was melted and sold.
Several suspects have been released from jail pending trial for health reasons, including 68-year-old Yunice Abbas, one of the five men accused of carrying out the heist and published a book about it last year. The alleged mastermind, Aomar Ait Khedache, wrote Kardashian West an apology letter from his prison cell, saying he regrets his actions and realizes the psychological damage he caused. At the time, a spokeswoman for Kardashian West said she was badly shaken but physically unharmed.
In related news, having been a victim herself, Kim Kardashian saved a group of women this week. Members of Afghanistan’s women’s youth development soccer team arrived in Britain on Thursday after being flown from Pakistan with the help of a New York rabbi, Premier League, Leeds United and Kardashian.
A plane chartered by the reality star carrying more than 30 teenage players and their families, about 130 people in all, landed at Stansted Airport near London. The players will spend 10 days in coronavirus quarantine before starting new lives in Britain. Britain and other countries evacuated thousands of Afghans in a rushed airlift as Kabul fell to Taliban militants in August.
Women playing sports is considered a political act of defiance against the Taliban, and hundreds of female athletes have left Afghanistan since the group returned to power and began curbing women’s education and freedoms. Australia evacuated the members of Afghanistan’s national women’s football team, and the youth girls’ team was resettled in Portugal.
