PARIS — Seated behind the counter of the luxury hotel residence “No Address,” Abderrahmane Ouatiki was fighting off sleep. He had already been on his night shift for five hours in the quiet, upscale Parisian establishment. At 2:20 a.m., trying to beat the boredom, the 40-something receptionist called a friend — but the conversation was cut short when three men wearing reflective armbands labeled “Police Nationale” knocked on the glass door.
Ouatiki rushed to let them in. Then his blood ran cold. In the dark, he hadn’t noticed their masked faces. It was too late — by the time he realized, the intruders had entered and tied him up, their one objective clear: to get Kim Kardashian’s gold and diamond jewelry.
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Held at gunpoint, Ouatiki became their unwilling guide, then interpreter, helping them retrieve the reality star’s 20-carat ring before being abandoned in the fire safety room, hands zip-tied. That night of Oct. 3, 2016, the student working at “No Address” to pay his rent was not the robbers’ main target — and the media frenzy that followed made that painfully clear. The reality TV star, then married to rapper Kanye West, completely dominated the narrative, leaving Abderrahmane with the bitter feeling of being a forgotten victim. It’s a sentiment the Algerian national, forced to return home after the incident, still carries with him as the suspects go on trial at the Paris Court of Assizes on April 28.
“Where’s the rapper’s wife?”
“This isn’t fake,” one of the masked men warned, pointing his weapon at Ouatiki and forcing him to kneel. “Where’s the rapper’s wife?” asked another. Under pressure, the receptionist eventually directed them to the first floor. “I lied and said I didn’t have a pass to open the door, but he found the key, grabbed me and forced me into the elevator.”
Handcuffed, he was dragged along by what he later described to police as “a jittery guy” and “a nice one,” according to statements obtained by Le Figaro. A third assailant, later joined by two more dressed in black, stayed downstairs to keep watch.
With a cold gun barrel pressed against him, Ouatiki unlocked the American star’s apartment. “Hello?” she called out — only to come face to face with masked men and the front desk clerk in their grip. She screamed. The thieves — who didn’t speak a word of English — demanded money. Confusion turned into a tense standoff.
“I feared for my life because of the gun and because the jittery guy was hysterical. I also feared for Kim Kardashian’s safety,” Ouatiki recalled. He told her to be quiet and stepped in as a translator. “She said she only had a thousand dollars. I told that to the short guy, and he flew into a rage. He demanded the jewelry, so I translated that into English, and she pointed toward a box near the bed.”
The robbers made off with necklaces, bracelets, rings and earrings encrusted with precious stones, valued at over 6 million euros. Stripped of her valuables, Kardashian was left bound in her bathroom. Ouatiki was brought back to the reception area and locked in a small side room.
“I wasn’t really beaten, just manhandled,” he told police a few hours later. But psychologically, the trauma of that night ran deep, his lawyer, Mohand Ouidja, said in an interview with Le Figaro.
The pressure of the robbery was quickly eclipsed by a suffocating media storm. By morning, newsrooms around the globe were reporting that Kardashian had been robbed at gunpoint in a Paris hotel. Cameras swarmed “No Address” on Rue Tronchet, while the American star had already fled the country via Paris-Le Bourget Airport.
Worldcrunch 🗞 Extra!
Know more • In the Paris trial over the 2016 Paris robbery of Kim Kardashian, which is expected to conclude on Friday, prosecutors have asked the court to hand down a 10-year prison sentence to alleged mastermind, Aomar Ait Khedache. Kardashian’s legal team urged the court to treat her as an ordinary victim rather than a celebrity figure, pushing back against fringe conspiracy theories suggesting she staged the crime.
Sentencing may prove to be challenging: most of the 10 suspects are now in their 60s and 70s, with several dealing with serious chronic conditions as the trial takes place. One suspect died shortly before the beginning of the trial.
As RFI reports, the charges of armed robbery and sequestration meant some of the accused could have faced up to 30 years in prison but it appears the prosecution took into account their age and heath condition in the sentencing demands.
Kardashian, meanwhile, said she forgave the defendants, despite the “feelings and the trauma and the way my life has changed.” — Jacob Shropshire (read more about the Worldcrunch method here)
Ignored by the media
Hounded by reporters, the receptionist gave a statement to “silence the rumors that Kim Kardashian had staged the robbery to defraud her insurance,” he recalls in the book Kim et les papys braqueurs (Kim and the Grandpa Robbers) by Patricia Tourancheau published in March 2024. But across the Atlantic, the star didn’t show the same support for the “concierge.”
“He told me, ‘shut up,’ that he didn’t know what would happen to us, that I had to stay quiet. He was so calm — so calm that it disturbed me. I didn’t understand how he could be so calm when I was hysterical,” Kardashian told the investigating judge who flew to New York to interview her in February 2017. Ouatiki saw himself go from victim to suspect.
Even the robbers seemed to forget the trauma this “terrifying night” caused him. In a letter sent to Kim Kardashian in June 2017, one of the arrested thieves apologized to the influencer for “the psychological damage inflicted.”
“I want to reach out to you as a human being, to express my regret, to say how moved I was seeing you in tears. I fully sympathize with the pain you and your children, husband and loved ones endured,” he wrote.
Not a single word for Ouatiki. “As if there was only one victim. But being important or famous doesn’t make you a deluxe victim. That label doesn’t belong to VIPs, the homeless or students. Whether you’re a king or a slave, you’re still a victim,” he says in Tourancheau’s book.
Abandoned by the justice system
Deeply shaken, the Algerian student, who had lived in France since 2003, was no longer able to continue his PhD in semiotics. “The final stage of his thesis had been validated a few months before the incident, and he had planned to quit night work to focus on it. But the robbery brought his academic career to a screeching halt,” his lawyer reported. As a result, his French residency permit was not renewed, and he was forced to return to Algeria at the end of 2016.
Although he was eventually cleared of all suspicion, Ouatiki was still kept at a distance. Because of his sudden departure, he wasn’t questioned by police when the suspects were arrested. Despite repeated requests from his legal team, he had to wait more than a year before the investigating judge traveled to Tizi Ouzou, Algeria, to hear him as a civil party.
“He felt abandoned during the investigation phase, but later, during trial preparation, even though it wasn’t easy, the justice system gave him a lot of support,” Ouidja said.
Still, the pain persists. A psychoanalyst’s report submitted to the court notes that Ouatiki suffers from a “serious post-traumatic stress disorder… often linked to the onset of major depression with long-lasting and widespread life consequences.” The report concludes: “He requires long-term psychological treatment.”
Before the judge, Ouatiki — who once dreamed of becoming a teacher — explained that he feels “crushed, stuck, because finding work with modest humanities degrees is nearly impossible.”
After nine years of suffering, the former doctoral candidate, now living off family support, hopes that “the injustices he experienced will finally be addressed with this trial,” Ouidja concludes. “He’s extremely anxious about returning to France to testify in court, but he’s getting ready.”
