Nearly a decade after Kim Kardashian was robbed at gunpoint in Paris, the men who allegedly targeted her are on trial.
In 2016, police said a group of men nicknamed the "grandpa robbers" stormed her French hotel room during Fashion week, stealing a reported $US10 million ($15.68 million) in jewellery.
It was the biggest robbery of an individual in France for more than 20 years, and made front pages around the world.
Now, the case is finally coming to court.
Here's what we know.
What happened?
On October 3, 2016, masked men posing as police officers entered the hotel where Kardashian was staying during Paris Fashion Week.
The star had attended a Givenchy show before returning to the hotel about midnight without her bodyguard, who was with her sister Kourtney.
The men, who arrived on bicycles, threatened the hotel concierge at gunpoint and forced him to lead them to Kardashian's suite.
"Where's the rapper's wife?" they said, referring to her then-husband Kanye West.
The intruders bound Kardashian's feet and hands, wrapped tape around her mouth and carried her to the bathroom.
Two of the intruders put guns to her head and one, Kardashian later told detectives, addressed her "with a very strong French accent" in English, telling her to hand over her diamond engagement ring.
Police said the thieves stole a jewellery box containing valuables worth 6 million euros ($8 million) as well as a ring worth 4 million euros.
Three men meanwhile kept watch at the reception, with one waiting at the wheel of a getaway car.
The entire robbery lasted about 10 minutes.
Diamond target
Kardashian's social media trail was the perfect blueprint for the robbers' heist.
Days before the robbery, she posted an image to Instagram showing her 18.88-carat diamond engagement ring, given to her by West.
Like most of the jewellery stolen that night, it was never recovered by police.
The bulk of the bounty is believed to have been sold in Belgium.
Investigators say one of the accused, Aomar Ait Khedache, admitted to entering the media personality's room to steal jewellery, including her diamond ring.
During interviews with police, Ait Khedache said that everything was laid out perfectly, from her movements around town to the inventory of jewels she carried with her.
"The jewellery was presented on the internet, specifying that she was not wearing fake jewellery," he said in a police interview.
"When she came to France … you just had to look on the internet to know everything, absolutely everything."
However, he has denied the prosecution's accusation that he was the ringleader.
In an episode of her reality TV show Keeping Up With The Kardashians, Kardashian said she believed her social media posts provided the robbers with a "window of opportunity".
"I was Snapchatting that I was home and that everyone was going out," she said.
"So I think they knew [bodyguard Pascal Duvier] was out with Kourtney and that I was there by myself.
"They had this window of opportunity and just went for it."
Who is being tried?
Of the 12 individuals originally charged in the case, 10 are on trial.
Out of those, five are accused of taking part in the heist and six are accused of being accessories to the crime.
Most of them were born in the 1950s, leading French media to dub them the "grandpa robbers".
Ait Khedache and Yunice Abbas are the only two defendants to have confessed.
Here are the 10 defendants on trial:
- Yunice Abbas
- Aomar Ait Khedache
- Harminiv Ait Khedache
- Didier Dubreucq
- Marc-Alexandre Boyer
- Florus Heroui
- Gary Mader
- Christiane Glotin
- Francois Delaporte
- Marc Boyer
Gary Madar, who was 27 at the time, was the brother of Kardashian's Paris chauffeur, Michael Madar. It's believed he fed information to the gang about the star's whereabouts.
Michael Madar is not a defendant.
Pierre Bouianere, 80, will have his own trial. He has denied all of the charges and his case is expected to be dismissed for health reasons.
DNA traces found on plastic bands used to tie Kardashian's wrists helped French police make the arrests.
The hearing will begin at the Court of Appeal of Paris on Monday, local time, with a presiding judge and six jurors.
A verdict is expected to be handed down on May 23.
Will Kardashian give evidence?
Yes.
Kardashian will testify in person at the trial, her US lawyer Michael Rhodes said.
"At this time, Ms Kardashian is preserving her testimony for the court and jury," her legal team said.
"She wishes for the trial to proceed in an orderly fashion in accordance with French law and with respect for all parties to the case."
Kardashian is set to appear on May 13, according to a provisional schedule.
'I kidnapped Kim Kardashian'
One of the suspects in the robbery, Abbas, plans to take responsibility for his role in the heist when he takes the stand.
"I will apologise," Abbas told the Associated Press.
"I mean it sincerely."
Abbas was a lookout at the reception area on the ground floor, ensuring the escape route was clear.
He said he was unarmed and didn't personally threaten Kardashian, but that he took his "share of responsibility".
The defendant was arrested in January 2017 and co-authored a book in 2021 titled I Kidnapped Kim Kardashian, in which he detailed his life story and provided an account of the robbery itself.
In the text, he described being recruited months beforehand for a team to rob an unnamed "wife of an American rapper" whose identity he only learned the following morning.
"I was told about a famous person, a rapper's wife. That's all the information I had," he said.
"Until the next morning, when I heard on TV about the influencer.
"That's when I understood who she was."
He told French television channel TF1 that he struggled to make ends meet as a pensioner, having spent 20 years of his working life in jail, and that the Kardashian robbery was to be his last job before retirement.
What did she say about the heist?
Kardashian's first comments about the robbery weren't made public until a trailer for her reality show was released in January the next year.
In the episode which aired in March 2017, she spoke about the robbery in detail.
"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."
In October 2020, Kardashian told US interviewer David Letterman she feared she would be assaulted and murdered during the heist and that her sister had been at the forefront of her mind.
"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."
In an interview on The Ellen Show in 2017, Kardashian said her "whole life had changed in terms of how I travel".
Speaking with New York Magazine in 2019, she said she blamed herself for the robbery after feeling like she overshared her "flashy" lifestyle.
"'I definitely see the things that I brought on myself, the biggest being the robbery," she said.
"Just being flashy and oversharing my every move on social media.
"All the things that really mattered to me then deeply — how many bags I had, what car I drove … I still like all that stuff but it doesn't matter. It could go away."
Why is the case only going to trial now?
The case was meant to be sent to trial in 2021.
However, limited court proceedings were taking place due to COVID-19 lockdowns.
Also, at the time, France was holding its largest-ever criminal trial over the November 2015 terror attacks.
