Laura Gozzi
Reporting from Palais de Justice court in Paris

Abbas has taken the stand and is being asked about the background report which the court heard earlier this morning.

He says he was surprised by some of what he heard, especially some of the comments made by his wife.

Abbas also confirms he has spent 17 years in total in and out of jail.

Image source, Getty Images

Let's go back to October 2016, when Kim Kardashian was in in the French capital for Paris Fashion Week.

Then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is debating US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and actress Shailene Woodley is arrested while protesting against an oil pipeline project in North Dakota.

And Kim's husband at the time, rapper Kanye West, is performing on stage at the Meadows Music & Arts festival in New York when he's told about the robbery.

He stops his performance and walks off the stage, leaving midway through singing Heartless. West then delays two of his shows on his Saint Pablo tour.

West, who had been in Paris with Kim before the robbery before flying home to play the US dates, said he felt "helpless".

Image source, Getty Images

Yunice Abbas gave an interview to Vice magazine in 2022.

In it, he showed no remorse.

“Since she was throwing money away, I was there to collect it, and that was that” he said. “Guilty? No, I don’t care. I don’t care.”

“They should be a little less showy toward people who can’t afford it.”

Police caught abbas because he left his DNA at the scene, he told Vice, after tying up the concierge.

Abbas also released a book following the robbery titled “I Held Up Kim Kardashian,” which has been mentioned in court today.

Image source, EPA

Most of the alleged accomplices in the heist were born in the 1950s, leading French media to dub them the "grandpa robbers".

Yunice Abbas and a 68-year-old man, Aomar Ait Khedache, have confessed; the others have not.

One has since passed away, and another, aged 81, will be excused as he is suffering from advanced dementia.

Almost nine years have passed since the heist.

Laura Gozzi
Reporting from Palais de Justice court in Paris

Henri Beauregard, the lawyer for the night receptionist Abderrahmane Ouatiki, and Yunice Abbas' lawyer Gabriel Dumenil have just had a bit of a tussle over the book which Abbas wrote.

The memoir certainly portrays Abbas in a sympathetic light, as a kind-hearted petty criminal with a colourful past.

But Ouatiki's lawyers say that the receptionist was left scarred by the events of October 2016 and that he suffered from PTSD.

"He suffered from the way the heist was romanticised and by the way the robbers are being described as 'grandpa robbers'. That's not what he saw - he just saw robbers," one of his lawyers has said in the past.

Laura Gozzi
Reporting from Palais de Justice court in Paris

The background report on Yunice Abbas is now over.

The president of the court, David De Pas, is asking the person who drew it up follow-up questions on Abbas' family life and upbringing.

He's also asking about the ways they may have contributed to his falling into a cycle of crime.

Laura Gozzi
Reporting from Palais de Justice court in Paris

As a reminder Abbas has admitted to taking part in the Kardashian heist.

He was among the three men who kept watch in the apartment’s reception as two others went upstairs and robbed Kardashian, who was alone in her room.

Later he fled the scene on a bike. But he soon fell off it, dropping a bag of jewels which scattered all over the road.

He described grabbing whatever he could – but he missed at least one piece, a diamond-encrusted necklace which was found by a passer by the next morning.

The woman in question wore it all day before realising where it had come from when she saw the news about the heist and handed it in to police.

Laura Gozzi
Reporting from Palais de Justice court in Paris

The court is hearing a long list of crimes Abbas has been found guilty of in the past- from petty crime to bank robberies to small-time drug trafficking - which he has said he was forced into due to debts.

The personality report also retraces the man's childhood, marked by the deaths of several of his siblings.

His wife pinned his repeated crimes on the fact he grew up in poverty, calling him very "ambitious".

Laura Gozzi
Reporting from Palais de Justice court in Paris

Yunice Abbas is a bald, stocky man.

Yesterday when he confirmed his name to the court he seemed self-assured, and not intimidated in the slightest about being in a courtroom.

But, then again, as he made it clear in his book, it was not his first time in this situation.

Abbas has spent much of his adult life in courtrooms and jails.

Laura Gozzi
Reporting from Palais de Justice court in Paris

Image source, EPA

Yesterday was procedural - it was a short session where the jury was selected and the defendants confirmed their names and counsel.

Then David De Pas, the president of the court, read out the report detailing the events around the heist.

The trial is meant to run until 23 May, with Kim Kardashian due to appear in court on 13 May.

That morning, her stylist is also due to testify.

Image source, Getty Images

Kim Kardashian has spoken several times about the armed robbery since it happened in 2016.

She first addressed it on her family’s reality show, Keeping Up With the Kardashians, a year after it happened.

“I heard pounding up the stairs,” she tells her sisters in the episode, and then described looking outside her door.

“I saw two guys holding another guy down in police uniforms right outside of my bedroom.”

A man came in and threw her on the bed, she explained.

In a later interview with US chat show host David Letterman, she said the men kept shouting at her asking for jewellery. She handed it to them and was then pulled towards one of the men.

Since the ordeal, she has spoken several times about being scared to be alone.

Laura Gozzi
Reporting from Palais de Justice court in Paris

Image source, BBC/Laura Gozzi

Today a series of enquêtes de personnalité are taking place - they are background reports on a person accused of a crime which French courts regularly include in their trials.

They take in elements of a defendant’s family history, behaviour, work and more to paint a picture of their lives and help jurors make a decision.

The first one up today is Yunice Abbas, 71. He hasn’t just admitted his guilt - he’s written a book about it titled “I held up Kim Kardashian”.

In the memoir he called himself a “part time crook” and sought to explain his version of events - which matches that of investigators pretty closely - and sketch out his life of petty crime. He said he hoped it would lead people to understand who he was as a man and to not just see him as a burglar.

But in 2021 lawyers for the hotel receptionist who the burglars also held up alongside Kim Kardashian sought a court order authorising the seizure of royalties of sales of Abbas’ book, who argued against a “communication campaign” to paint the robbers as “peaceful grandpas”.

Imogen James
Live reporter

If you have been keeping up with the Kardashians for as long as I have, then this story won’t come as much of a surprise to you.

But you might have to jog your memory.

That’s because it’s taken nine years for the highly-publicised Kim Kardashian Paris robbery to make it to trial. Monday saw the start of proceedings against 10 people accused of kidnap and armed robbery.

The reality and business mogul says she was held at gunpoint during a hotel room break in during Paris Fashion Week in October 2016. A gang of five thieves impersonating police stole millions of pounds worth of jewellery and diamonds.

Kardashian was left bound and gagged in the bathroom, fearing for her life. She’s since described the trauma it left her with in several interviews, and now we will hear the full story.

It’s expected she will give evidence at a later date in the trial.

Our reporter Laura Gozzi is waiting at the Palais de Justice court, and our team in London will be following along.