Coach's back flip resurrects Knox's career
(APW_ENG_19970729.0114)
1) Australian veteran rugby union fly-half David Knox was berated on Saturday as a ``non-tackler'' by the national coach who now rates him an automatic choice for the Wallabies.
2) Coach Greg Smith's amazing back flip on the 33-year-old continued a strange season for Knox.
3) Knox was outstanding in the Super 12 competition but walked out on Australia last month when Smith picked Tim Horan out of position at fly-half. Smith said Knox could not match Horan's defense but with the incumbent breaking a thumb against New Zealand on Saturday, Knox will get another chance to change Smith's mind.
4) After the All Blacks ruthlessly rolled Australia 33-18 in Melbourne, Smith called Knox a ``non-tackler'' in discussing replacements for Horan.
5) It was reported that Australian Rugby Union chief executive John O'Neill intervened to urge selectors to call Knox up from his South African base, where he is playing provincial rugby for Natal.
6) Smith said Tuesday that if Knox plays well against South Africa in the tri-nations series match at Suncorp Stadium on Saturday he might retain the position for the remainder of the tournament.
7) Horan is likely to be out for two months, leaving the door open for Knox to make the tour of Argentina and following one-off test against England later this year.
8) ``What you do is give people an opportunity in a position and if they perform they retain the position,'' said Smith.
9) ``I don't have the slightest doubt David Knox will perform. If he doesn't it won't be his fault, it'll be the circumstances.
10) ``Knoxy's the kind of bloke who'll enjoy the circumstances. I'm sure he'll be okay.''
11) Knox was flying back from South Africa Tuesday to prepare for his ninth Test appearance as Australia had its first Brisbane training session since the demoralizing loss to New Zealand.
12) ``When I got the call it was a bit of a surprise but I'm very happy,'' Knox said.
13) ``There's more to a game of rugby than defense, although it's very important, but I've really worked on my defense in the last couple of years.''
14) A majority of Wallaby players believe Knox should have been picked in the Test team from the outset this year.
15) ``If we can keep offering good possession for the back line we know we can maintain a lot of pressure on any opposition,'' said scrum half George Gregan.
16) ``David's got a very good set of hands and plays a style which gives his outside backs more opportunities. That's really going to help our game.''
17) But captain John Eales warned Knox could not be expected to do it himself.
18) ``He's not going to be able to come in and just do it,'' Eales said.
19) It obvious that Knox is not one of his coach's favorites, but he was lucky enough that Smith has even less time for the nearest rival - Queensland's fly-half Elton Flatley.
20) In November last year Smith said ``strewth, he is a bloke with a lot of courage ... but he's not a Test five-eighth.''
3 detained in Italy on suspicion of murder and sexual assault of UK student
(APW_ENG_20071106.1279)
1) Italian police detained an American woman and two others on suspicion of murdering and sexually assaulting a female British student in Perugia last week, authorities said Tuesday.
2) Meredith Kercher, 21, was found dead Friday in her rented room in the central Italian city the morning after attending a Halloween party, authorities said.
3) Kercher, found half-naked, died fighting off a sexual attack, Perugia Police Chief Arturo De Felice told a news conference Tuesday. He said Kercher was a "victim and nothing more."
4) A coroner said Kercher was stabbed in the neck, but police said no murder weapon has been found.
5) The three people detained were described by Italian news agencies as Kercher's 20-year-old roommate, a 24-year-old Italian man who may have been the roommate's boyfriend and a 37-year-old Congolese man.
6) Kercher had been enrolled for a year of study in Perugia, an Umbrian city 170 kilometers (105 miles) north of Rome that is known for its university for foreigners.
7) Members of Kercher's family, including her father and sister, arrived in Perugia Tuesday to meet with Italian authorities.
8) "Words can't even begin to describe how we feel right now," Stephanie Kercher said at a news conference held at a Perugia hotel. She described her sister as an "intelligent, witty and caring" person.
American suspect to face hearing in death of British girl
(APW_ENG_20071107.1454)
1) An American student detained in a central Italian city in connection with the slaying of her British roommate will face a judge Thursday in a hearing to determine whether she and two other suspects will stay in jail.
2) Amanda Marie Knox, a 20-year-old University of Washington student from Seattle, was detained Tuesday in connection with the sexual assault and killing of British student Meredith Kercher, 21.
3) Police also detained Knox's 24-year-old Italian boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, and a Congolese resident of Perugia, Lumumba "Patrick" Diya, 38.
4) Perugia police did not release the suspects' names, but a police spokeswoman confirmed Wednesday that the names that had appeared in the Italian media were correct.
5) Kercher's seminude body was found in the apartment, which she shared with Knox, after she attended a Halloween party, authorities said.
6) Police have said she died fighting off a sexual attack. The coroner said Kercher was stabbed in the neck, but police say no murder weapon had been found.
7) In Italy, police detain people as suspects if prosecutors feel they have sufficient proof that they were involved in a crime. Within 48 hours, a judge must decide at a hearing whether to confirm the detentions or reject them based on the prosecutors' evidence.
8) If the judge at Thursday's hearing confirms the detentions, the prosecutor will likely ask that the suspects remain in prison while the investigation continues, said attorney Valerio Spigarelli, who is not connected to the case but is an expert in Italian criminal law.
9) At a later date, depending on the course of the investigation, prosecutors may ask a judge to formally indict the suspects and put them on trial, Spigarelli said.
10) Knox's mother, Edda Mellas, arrived in Perugia on Tuesday night and was staying in a city-owned apartment, city spokesman Paolo Occhiuto said. He said Mellas had been informed during the trip that her daughter had not just been questioned by police in the case but had been detained.
11) Members of Kercher's family arrived earlier Tuesday in Perugia and were being hosted at the city's expense at a central hotel, awaiting word from prosecutors on when they can take her remains home, Occhiuto said in a phone interview.
12) "We don't know how long it will take," he said.
13) In Seattle, the president of the Seattle-Perugia Sister City Association, Mike James, said it helped make travel arrangements for Mellas to get to Perugia. At the time she left, she was going to comfort her daughter and did not know she was a suspect.
14) A spokesman for the University of Washington in Seattle, Norm Arkans, said Knox was a student in good standing, studying this quarter in Perugia.
15) "That's all we can say because of student information privacy," Arkans said. "We don't have a role in any student's private legal problems."
16) Perugia, a city of about 150,000 people, hosts two major universities, the Italian state University of Perugia, with some 20,000 students, as well as the University for Foreigners, with a few thousand students, Occhiuto said.
17) Dozens of red commemorative candles remained lit Wednesday evening in Kercher's memory on the stairs of Perugia's medieval cathedral, but many foreign students continued to party as usual.
18) "The Americans still come out as if nothing happened," said Esteban Garcia Pascual, the Argentine-born owner of a downtown pub that is popular among foreign students. "They go out and have fun and continue their adventure."
Italian judge: US student accuses barman of killing her roommate
(APW_ENG_20071109.1220)
1) An American student has accused a Congolese bar owner of knifing her British roommate to death, saying she had to cover her ears to drown out her friend's screams, according to a judge's ruling Friday ordering the American, the Congolese and another suspect to remain in jail in connection with the slaying.
2) In her ruling, however, the judge noted that Amanda Marie Knox, of Seattle, was confused about the events since she had smoked hashish before the slaying. And the judge also said the murder weapon was a knife that belonged to the third suspect, Knox's Italian boyfriend.
3) Knox, 20, Raffaele Sollecito, 23, and Diya "Patrick" Lumumba, 38, have been detained in connection with the sexual assault and killing of Meredith Kercher, 21, who was found dead Nov. 2. They are under investigation for murder and sexual assault, and have all denied involvement in the killing, according to their lawyers.
4) Judge Claudia Matteini ordered the three, who have not been charged, to be kept in jail. Matteini said there were "serious indications of guilt" that warranted keeping the three in jail for up to a year while the investigation continues.
5) The 19-page ruling says that Knox, in her meetings with prosecutors, had accused Lumumba of killing Kercher.
6) Knox had "confused memories, since she had taken hashish in the afternoon," the ruling read. But Knox told prosecutors that "Patrick slipped off with Meredith ... on whom he had a crush ... in the bedroom, where they had sex."
7) "She (Knox) added that she could not remember if (Meredith) had been previously threatened but that it was Patrick who killed her," the ruling read. "She made clear that in those moments ... she heard Meredith scream so much that she, being scared, covered her ears."
8) A lawyer for Knox, Luciano Ghirga, said Friday he had warned Knox against making unfounded accusations. He said she had given "three versions and ... it is difficult to evaluate which one is true."
9) "We told her that it would be worse than assassination to accuse an innocent person. We explained to her what slander means in Italy and we'll see," Ghirga said.
10) Under Italian law, suspects can be kept behind bars without being charged if a judge rules there is enough evidence to jail them and there is a chance they might flee, repeat the crime or tamper with evidence. Prosecutors may later seek to indict the suspects and put them on trial.
11) The judge said in her ruling that, if released, the suspects could try to flee Italy.
12) "They could easily have left the territory of the state to escape the investigation," the judge wrote, noting that Lumumba is from Congo, Knox is American and Sollecito could have enlisted his girlfriend's help to flee.
13) Kercher's body was found in the apartment she shared with Knox, and police said she died fighting off a sexual attack. The coroner said Kercher was stabbed in the neck.
14) Matteini said it was not yet clear who might have dealt the fatal blow, but said Sollecito's footprints were found in Kercher's room, and identified the murder weapon as a knife with an 8.5-centimeter-long (3.3-inch-long) blade that the Italian usually had with him.
15) In her reconstruction of the incident, the judge said Knox, who worked for Lumumba at his Perugia bar, let the two men into the apartment with her keys.
16) "Then something went wrong," Matteini wrote. "The two (men) demanded some kind of sexual act, which (Kercher) refused to do. She was then threatened with a knife, which Sollecito always carried with him, and with which Meredith was stabbed in the neck."
17) One of Sollecito's attorneys, Luca Maori, said he planned to appeal the decision.
18) "We didn't expect it," he said. While saying he had not yet read the ruling, he said the defense team was "perplexed" by the judge's decision.
Mother visits her jailed U.S. daughter in Perugia murder case
(APW_ENG_20071110.0680)
1) The mother of a U.S. student suspected in the murder of her British apartment mate comforted her daughter in jail Saturday, the prison's chaplain said.
2) Amanda Marie Knox, 20, of Seattle, is being held in the Umbria town of Perugia while authorities investigate the grisly slaying of a British student with whom she shared living quarters. Also in jail are Knox's Italian boyfriend and the Congolese owner of a bar she frequented in Perugia, where she attended university.
3) All three have denied involvement in the slaying.
4) Authorities say Meredith Kercher, 21, was stabbed in the neck in her bed as she resisted sexual assault. Police who came to the apartment Nov. 2 to return Kercher's cell phone, which had been found in a neighbor's garden, discovered her seminude body in a pool of blood.
5) The Italian news agency Ansa reported Saturday that Kercher's body had been flown to Rome and was expected to be flown to Britain on Sunday.
6) The prison chaplain in Perugia visited Knox Saturday.
7) "As far as I can ascertain, her mother was able to give her comfort, despite the atmosphere," the Rev. Saulo Scarabattoli, said after visiting Amanda Saturday.
8) The Roman Catholic priest said he didn't meet with Knox's mother, Edda Mellas.
9) Italian news reports said Mellas did not talk to reporters when she arrived at the prison Saturday morning.
10) Scarabattoli said Knox had received visits from him "with joy" and was writing down her thoughts.
11) "It's not a diary in a formal sense as we know it, but she is recording sensations, memories, her account," the priest told The Associated Press by telephone. Scarabattoli said she gladly accepted a selection from the Gospel of St. Luke about the resurrection that will be read at Sunday's prison Mass.
12) Knox and her mother would have sat face-to-face in the visitor's room, said the priest. Inmates usually are allowed hour-long visits about four times a month, he said.
13) Francesco Sollecito, the father of Knox's boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, visited his 23-year-son in prison. He described his son as "tranquil enough, although obviously tried by the atmosphere."
14) He is also "a bit perturbed. He's reviewing his impressions of this girl," the father said, referring to Knox. Raffaele Sollecito had been seeing her for about two weeks before the slaying.
15) Investigators have said Kercher was stabbed with a knife similar to one the boyfriend was known to carry.
16) But Francesco Sollecito dismissed any link. "I, too, collect weapons. I collect rifles and other things," he said. His son, he said, "collects knives -- nothing more, nothing less."
17) The father, a doctor, contended the wound suffered by Kercher, was "compatible with several kinds of knives."
18) In a ruling upholding the detentions, Perugia Judge Claudia Matteini described Knox as confused about the events, since she had smoked hashish before the slaying.
19) The third suspect, Diya "Patrick" Lumumba, 38, was accused by Knox of the killing, according to the judge's ruling. Lumumba's lawyer, has maintained that his client was at his pub at the time and accused Knox of making "slanderous statements."
20) Sollecito's attorney has also told reporters that his client was not at the crime scene, although the judge wrote that Sollecito's footprints were found in Kercher's room. The Italian news agency Apcom quoted Sollecito's father as saying that the footprints were of a "very common" kind of shoe and that the defense would press for new scientific tests on his son's shoes.
Italian police find DNA traces of slain British student and American suspect on kitchen knife
(APW_ENG_20071116.1181)
1) Police found DNA traces from two people on a kitchen knife believed to be the weapon in the killing of a 21-year-old British student: the victim's on the tip, and her American roommate's on the handle.
2) Police said Meredith Kercher died fighting off a sexual attack, while the coroner said she was stabbed in the neck. Her body was found Nov. 2 in the apartment she shared with Amanda Marie Knox.
3) The DNA matching Kercher and Knox, 20, of Seattle, came from a knife found in the home of Knox's Italian boyfriend in Perugia, where all three were students.
4) "This is a fairly relevant clue to link Meredith's death to the actions of these people," Francesco Maresca, a lawyer for Kercher's family, told The Associated Press. "It shows that evidently something did happen among them."
5) Knox, her 24-year-old boyfriend Raffele Sollecito and Diya "Patrick" Lumumba, a 38-year-old Congolese resident who owns a bar where Knox worked, were arrested Nov. 6. All three have denied involvement.
6) Sollecito's lawyers and family said in a written statement Thursday that his DNA was not found on the knife that contained traces of DNA from Kercher and Knox.
7) The Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera said that Kercher's DNA was found on the tip of the 6 1/2-inch blade, while Knox's was on the handle. Repeated attempts to reach Knox's lawyer for comment were unsuccessful.
8) "A knife nails the couple," Il Messaggero, a Rome daily, said in a front-page headline.
9) The circumstances of the killing remain unclear. The case has shocked Perugia, a small Medieval city in central Italy that hosts two major universities and draws thousands of foreign students every year.
10) Kercher's body was found under a quilt in her room in the apartment she shared with Knox.
11) Police said Kercher had bruises on her neck and face and her body showed signs of sexual violence. A court document said she died after a "rather long agony," possibly bleeding to death.
12) No charges have been filed. But the Italian judge who upheld the suspects' detentions said last week that there were "serious indications of guilt" -- enough to keep them behind bars for up to a year.
13) Police and lawyers said Friday that forensic experts were testing items collected at Sollecito's house, such as other knives and shoes. The suspect's computer was also to be checked, since Sollecito told magistrates at one point that he had spent the night of the murder at his home working on his computer.
14) "We are awaiting the results from forensic police with great serenity," said his attorney, Luca Maori. He said he filed a new appeal Friday to try to get Sollecito released from jail.
15) Knox has changed her account several times, according to her own lawyer and court documents. At one point she accused the Congolese suspect and said she had to cover her ears to drown out Kercher's screams from next door.
16) In another version, she said she was not at home the night of the murder, according to the judge's ruling upholding her detention. But a street camera caught her entering her home that evening, according to Italian reports.
17) Lumumba claimed that he was at the bar he owns in downtown Perugia, but it is not clear if the bar was open and the suspect was there at the time. Investigators believe he might have gone there late to give himself an alibi.
18) A witness cited by the defense -- a Swiss professor confirming Lumumba's alibi -- failed to convince investigators, the reports said.
19) "The crime is still recent, forensic tests require time," said Maresca, the Kercher family lawyer. "Better to wait a little longer than having things done poorly."
Lawyer: New fingerprints found in blood of British student killed in Italy
(APW_ENG_20071117.0634)
1) New, bloody fingerprints have been discovered on the pillow of a British student found slain in her bedroom in the Italian university town of Perugia earlier this month, a lawyer for the victim's family said Saturday.
2) The same person's prints were also found on toilet paper in the house where the body of Meredith Kercher, 21, was found by police on Nov. 2, said the lawyer, Francesco Maresca, in a telephone interview from Florence. He did not know whether the prints belonged to a potential new suspect in the case, but said they did not belong to any of the three suspects now jailed in the investigation.
3) Milan daily Corriere della Sera reported that one of the prints on Kercher's pillow was that of a man's thumb, but Maresca said he had no details about the prints, including whether they were believed to be those of a man.
4) "One step away from (finding) a fourth" suspect, was the headline on the Turin newspaper La Stampa's story about the fingerprint development.
5) Kercher's 20-year-old American roommate, Amanda Marie Knox, and Knox's 23-year-old Italian boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, are being held in a Perugia jail as suspects in the woman's sexual assault and fatal stabbing. Also jailed in the case is a 38-year-old Congolese man, Diya "Patrick" Lumumba, who runs a pub that was frequented by the American.
6) No charges have been filed. But the Italian judge who upheld the suspects' detentions said last week that there were "serious indications of guilt" -- enough to keep them behind bars for up to a year.
7) All three suspects have denied involvement in the killing.
8) Knox has told investigators that Lumumba was infatuated with Kercher and was in the British woman's bedroom in the hours before the victim was killed, but Lumumba has denied being in the house.+
9) One of Lumumba's lawyers, Carlo Pacelli, told reporters Saturday that the defense is seeking further scientific analysis to better establish how and precisely when Kercher was killed, including a possible new autopsy on the body, which was flown to Britain on Nov. 11.
10) The body has not yet been buried, Maresca said.
11) "In a word, they are seeking to know ... the exact hour, the moment of death," as well as more details on the cause, Maresca said.
12) Based on the autopsy by the Perugia coroner and accounts by Kercher's friends of when she ate dinner with them on Nov. 1, the woman is believed to have died between 9 p.m. and 11 p.m. on Nov. 1, according to court papers filed by the judge who ordered the three suspects held.
13) The state of digestion of a victim's last meal is commonly used in helping to determine time of death.
14) Maresca said it is now believed that Kercher "might have eaten something in the house" after she returned from dinner. If the food found in Kercher's digestive system turns out to be from her after-dinner consumption and not from the dinner with her friends, it would make the time of death later.
15) A later time of death could help Lumumba since he has claimed he was in the pub later in the evening. Investigators have found cash register receipts to confirm the night spot was operating in late evening.
16) Maresca said a court order was issued on Saturday authorizing two outside experts to be engaged to study remains of fingernails, tissue and other biological traces of the crime scene that have been preserved on slides.
Lawyers for suspects in slaying of British student seek freedom amid new leads on killer
(APW_ENG_20071118.0618)
1) Lawyers for three suspects jailed in connection with the slaying of a British student said Sunday they were hopeful their clients could be freed after investigators found a bloody fingerprint from someone else on the victim's pillow.
2) The lawyers said the discovery bolsters their appeals to a court to review the judge's Nov. 9 ruling jailing their clients. A date for a new hearing on the detentions is expected to be announced this week.
3) Meredith Kercher, 21, was found dead in her Perugia apartment on Nov. 2. She was sexually assaulted and fatally stabbed.
4) Her 20-year-old American roommate, Amanda Marie Knox; Knox's 23-year-old Italian boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito; and a Congolese pub owner, Diya "Patrick" Lumumba, 38, are being held in a Perugia jail as suspects.
5) No charges have been filed. But the Italian judge who upheld the suspects' detentions has said there were "serious indications of guilt" that warranted keeping them behind bars for up to a year while the investigation continues.
6) All three suspects have denied involvement in the killing.
7) Lawyers for the three suspects submitted motions to a court to review the detentions late last week. By early this week, prosecutors must respond by submitting the results of their investigation so far. Also this week, the court is expected to set a date for a hearing as to whether the detentions are justified, the attorneys said.
8) The lawyers praised indications that investigators were turning their attention to another suspect after bloody fingerprints were discovered on Kercher's pillowcase and on toilet paper in the house that did not match those of any of the three jailed suspects.
9) "I'm convinced this is an open case," said Carlo Pacelli, Lumumba's lawyer. He said that he hopes the hearing would confirm that his client had nothing to do with the slaying; Lumumba has maintained he was at his pub, not in the apartment, on the night of the slaying.
10) Tiziano Tedeschi, attorney for suspect Raffaele Sollecito, said the lead on the pillowcase traces was "good news."
11) Tedeschi said investigators knew from the beginning that there were such traces and that Meredith was found with hair clutched in her hands. He said investigators should have focused on identifying the DNA from those samples rather than detaining his client in haste.
12) "This is the first suspect, not the fourth," he said of the new investigative lead. "They should have immediately focused their attention on this subject, and then if there were others."
13) "They (prosecutors) didn't want to find the truth; they wanted to close the case and make a 'bella figura,'" because the case was in the international spotlight, he said in a phone interview.
14) Italian news reports said Sunday that investigators were believed to have identified the "fourth suspect," based on the bloody fingerprints, as a man from the Ivory Coast with a known criminal record, and that he was believed to have been formally placed under investigation.
15) Phone calls placed to prosecutors were not answered Sunday; messages left with police seeking confirmation of the reports were not returned.
16) Luciano Ghirga, Knox's attorney, said the reported identification of a new suspect changed little for his client. He noted that Knox had never mentioned any such person in her two declarations to prosecutors.
Suspect in slaying of UK student in Italy is nabbed in Germany; another in probe is set free
(APW_ENG_20071120.1388)
1) German police on Tuesday arrested a fugitive wanted in the sex slaying of a British college student in Italy, nabbing an African man whose fingerprints had been found at the bloody scene of the sordid crime that has gripped Italians.
2) Hours later, a Congolese pub owner was freed from jail, where he had been held after being accused of the stabbing by another suspect, the victim's 20-year-old American roommate.
3) Rudy Hermann Guede, 20, a native of the Ivory Coast, was taken into custody in the western German city of Mainz after police stopped him for riding a Frankfurt-bound train without a ticket, investigators said.
4) Guede was sought in the sexual assault and fatal stabbing of 21-year-old Meredith Kercher in the house she shared with American student Amanda Marie Knox in Perugia. Knox and her Italian boyfriend remain jailed in connection with the Nov. 2 slaying. Both have denied any wrongdoing.
5) Perugia Police Chief Arturo De Felice said he expected Guede to be sent to Italy in "very short time."
6) "I would like to thank the German police very much because today they arrested the Ivorian man who was wanted in a savage murder in Perugia," said Italian Premier Romano Prodi, who was in Germany for talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
7) Guede, who once played on a local basketball team in Perugia, had been taken in by an affluent Italian family living in a villa near the hills in the Perugia area.
8) Diya "Patrick" Lumumba, 38, a Congolese man who owns a pub in Perugia, was released Tuesday for lack of evidence. He had been jailed after Knox told investigators Lumumba had a crush on Kercher and had killed her while Knox was in another room, covering her ears so she wouldn't hear the victim's screams.
9) But no physical evidence has emerged tying Lumumba to the crime and witnesses have placed him at his bar the night of the murder.
10) The autopsy found that Kercher had likely died slowly from a stab wound to her neck. She was found on the floor near her bed in her blood-splattered bedroom, half-naked, with a foot sticking out from under bedcovers.
11) Knox's lawyers said earlier in the probe that their client had given various versions about the killing. The judge's order upholding Knox's jailing on Nov. 6 noted she was confused about the events because she had smoked hashish the night of the killing.
12) Authorities have said they found Knox's DNA on the handle of a knife believed to have been the murder weapon and Kercher's on the blade. The knife came from the kitchen of a house where Knox's Italian boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, lived in Perugia.
13) The search for Guede was launched after bloody fingerprints were found on Kercher's pillow and on toilet paper in the house. The prints did not match Knox, Sollecito or Lumumba.
14) Lumumba expressed relief when he was let out of jail Tuesday.
15) "I thank God who helped me go back home," said Lumumba, who lives in Perugia with his Polish-born wife and young son.
16) Guede was abandoned by his mother and came to Italy when he was 5, arriving in Perugia with his father, according to an interview in the Rome daily La Repubblica with the Perugia industrialist who took in the Ivorian youth at age 17.
17) Guede lived in the home of Paolo Caporali, 62, for "seven or eight months," the industrialist said.
18) "For me and my wife in that period, it was like having one more son -- four instead of three," Caporali was quoted as saying.
19) Guede played basketball with one of Caporali's sons on a team sponsored by the industrialist's vending machine company.
20) When Guede turned 18, he left the family and turned out to be "a big liar," Caporali said.
21) Guede skipped school to play video games, and when Caporali found him a job as a gardener at a tourist lodging, he left after a few months without explanation, the industrialist was quoted as saying.
22) Guede was scheduled to appear Wednesday before a German judge, who will rule whether he can be kept in custody on the Italian warrant, said Karl-Rudolf Winkler, a spokesman for prosecutors in the city of Koblenz.
23) Italian police traced Guede to Germany through a friend who established Internet contact with the suspect Monday night and chatted with him for hours, Italian investigators said.
American ' s blood places her in Italy apartment the night roommate was slain
(APW_ENG_20071128.1244)
1) An American student jailed in connection with the death of her British flatmate tried to clean up traces of her presence at the crime scene but left a drop of her own blood left on a bathroom faucet, according to a prosecutor.
2) The top investigating prosecutor wrote that the body of evidence against University of Washington student Amanda Knox has only grown as the probe continued. The document was prepared for a hearing Friday to decide whether Knox and her former boyfriend will remain in jail.
3) The prosecutor maintained that the two remained a flight risk, because Knox could return to the United States and her Italian boyfriend has "not insignificant economic resources."
4) Investigators in the central Italian city of Perugia have concluded that the blood was left on the faucet between Nov. 1 and 2, placing Knox in the apartment she shared with Meredith Kercher either the night the 21-year-old Briton was killed or the following morning.
5) Knox has acknowledged she was home the night Kercher was killed by a knife wound to the neck, but has denied any wrongdoing.
6) Calls to Knox's attorney were not answered Wednesday.
7) "The stain is visible to the naked eye, it belongs to Amanda Knox," prosecutor Giuliano Mignini wrote in the summary submitted to the court. "The visibility of the stain is such to exclude that it could have been left in the days before the crime since it would surely have been cleaned."
8) Knox, a 20-year-old from Seattle, has said in one of several conflicting statements to prosecutors that she was in the apartment the night of the slaying, saying at one point she had to cover her ears to drown out Kercher's screams.
9) The summary said that the apartment was cleaned after the slaying in an attempt to erase traces of Knox's presence. The only fingerprint of Knox found in the apartment was on glass, while many more traces were left by two other Italian flatmates and visitors.
10) "It is reasonable to hypothesize that she herself felt the need to eliminate the traces of her presence from an apartment in which she lived," Mignini wrote. "It's evident that after the crime, an effort was made to remove everything possible -- also staging a burglary, which wasn't credible since there were no traces of a break-in on the door, and the broken window was quite probably broken from the inside."
11) On Wednesday, investigators informed a judge that a second autopsy on Kercher's body wasn't necessary, meaning she can be buried in Britain, where her body was flown Nov. 11, Kercher family attorney Francesco Maresca said.
12) Defense lawyers had pushed for new tests to determine more precisely how and when Kercher died. Based on the autopsy and accounts by Kercher's friends of when she ate dinner with them, she is believed to have died between 9 p.m. and 11 p.m. on Nov. 1, a judge wrote.
13) However, Maresca has said it is believed Kercher might have eaten something in the house after she returned from dinner, which could influence the determination of her time of death.
14) Mignini said in the summary that a mushroom was found lodged in Kercher's esophagus, although a friend with whom she had dinner said the Briton didn't eat any.
15) "Meredith surely ate (again) later, perhaps with her assassins," the prosecutor wrote.
16) In addition to Knox, the American's then-boyfriend, Italian Raffaele Sollecito, and Rudy Hermann Guede, an Ivory Coast native, have been detained in the slaying. Guede is awaiting extradition to Italy after his arrest in Germany.
17) A fourth suspect was recently released from jail for lack of evidence. All deny any role in Kercher's slaying.
18) Knox's and Kercher's DNA were found on a knife that investigators believe may have been the murder weapon; the knife was found in Sollecito's home.
19) Hinting at a possible motive, Mignini cited the two other flatmates as saying Knox and Kercher didn't like each other and quarreled over male visitors and cleaning the apartment.
20) While stopping short of accusing Knox of being the killer, Mignini said the fact that the American's DNA was found between the knife's handle and blade was "highly significant." Kercher's DNA was found on the sharp end of the knife.
21) Also found in Sollecito's home were two bottles of bleach, which Mignini noted is useful for removing blood stains. Sollecito's maid told investigators the bleach hadn't been there before, and that she uses other cleaning agents to tidy the house, the summary said.
22) Sollecito has said he was home on the computer the night of the slaying. Mignini disputed defense claims that Sollecito had been logged on, saying police had proven that the computer had been left connected to the Internet without anybody accessing it overnight.
23) A bloody footprint found near Kercher's body was matched Sollecito's shoes, though the shoes themselves had no traces and had been washed, Mignini wrote.
24) Guede has acknowledged that he was in Kercher's room the night she died, but said he didn't kill her and that an Italian who is trying to frame him did. DNA testing has confirmed that Guede had sex with Kercher the night of the murder.
Student life abroad comes under scrutiny after gruesome slaying in medieval Italian city
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1) For many university students, a year studying abroad is an experience of a lifetime to learn a language and live in a new culture. But it's often just as much about partying in a place where alcohol and drugs are readily available.
2) Even for the wild life of college kids away from home, something went horribly wrong in this picturesque central Italian city where a 21-year-old British student was killed Nov. 1.
3) Meredith Kercher was sexually assaulted and stabbed in the apartment she shared with her American flatmate, Amanda Marie Knox -- who has been detained along with two other people in connection with the death.
4) The gruesome tale of sex, drugs and murder has gripped Italy, and even the Vatican has weighed in on what it called the "dangers" of students living far from home and family.
5) Knox, 20, and her one-time boyfriend and Italian co-defendant Raffaele Sollecito, are due in court on Friday for a hearing on whether they should remain in jail while the probe continues.
6) A third suspect, Rudy Hermann Guede, a native of Ivory Coast is in detention in Germany awaiting extradition to Italy. Diya "Patrick" Lumumba, a Congolese who owned the Perugia bar where Knox worked, was recently released from jail for lack of evidence. All four deny wrongdoing.
7) The case, and particularly Knox's alleged role, has made headlines in Italy, Britain and beyond in part because of the light it has shone on the seemingly privileged world of students spending a semester or year abroad studying.
8) And by all indications, Knox was a bright and eager student proficient enough in languages to read Harry Potter in German.
9) She grew up in Seattle, where she attended a $12,000-a-year Jesuit high school. Her parents married in 1987, the year she was born, divorced two years later and remarried.
10) Last spring, she made the dean's list at the University of Washington, where, according to her profile on the MySpace.com social networking site, she was majoring in German and Italian and minoring in creative writing.
11) Before arriving in Italy in September, she had lined up an internship at the Bundestag in Berlin with the help of her uncle. On her first day of work, she left her apartment three hours early since she had to navigate Berlin's public transport system on her own and wanted to be on time.
12) Yet, at the same time Knox also comes across as a typical irresponsible, 20-year-old: She walked off her Bundestag job after just a few days because, she wrote, she had nothing to do.
13) Her MySpace page, in which she calls herself "Foxy Knoxy," includes images of her drunk and acting silly in a video, and she referred several times to drug use and nights spent working and dancing at Lumumba's bar -- providing a different side to what the Italian press calls her "angel face" look.
14) Lumumba said after his release from jail that Knox was a self-confident and flirtatious girl who was intensely jealous of Kercher.
15) "Amanda hated Meredith because people loved her more than they did Amanda," Britain's Sunday Mirror quoted Lumumba as saying last week. "She was insanely jealous that Meredith was taking over her position as Queen Bee."
16) In a Nov. 9 ruling ordering the suspects jailed, a judge in Perugia wrote that Knox, in her statement to prosecutors, had accused Lumumba of killing Kercher and at one point had covered her ears to drown out her screams.
17) The judge noted that Knox's memories were confused since she had smoked hashish earlier in the day.
18) In many European capitals, the close-knit world of study abroad students is hard to miss.
19) Groups of rowdy, mostly English-speaking students are routinely seen staggering through central squares, like Rome's Campo dei Fiori, on any given Saturday night, frequenting bars that carry "Two-for-One" or "Lady's Night" signs that clearly target English-speakers out to get drunk.
20) But the small city of Perugia, population 150,000, seemed to have provided a different experience to its students.
21) With its steep medieval streets and heavy presence of European students attending its University for Foreigners, Perugia was off the beaten-track for Americans, said Carol Clark, the American director of the Perugia Umbra Institute which offers study abroad programs to U.S. students.
22) "Here, foreign students tend to live in apartments with international roommates, buy food, interact with locals," although the foreign community still has their own pubs and meeting points, she said.
23) The students who come to Perugia, she said, "want a place which is less Americanized," than the big cities that attract U.S. college programs.
24) But binge-drinking and drug use is certainly available for those who want it, said Esteban Garcia Pascual, an Argentine whose bar "La Tana dell'Orso" is a top destination for foreign students in Perugia.
25) "Perugia is more of a break to them than a commitment," he said. "For them, it is a new world. They come here, have fun and get trashed in the evening."
26) Yet not all students come to Perugia -- or go on study abroad programs -- just to have fun with other Americans, said Zachary Nowak, a 30-year-old New Yorker who fell in love with Perugia during his own study abroad program and never left.
27) "They are really integrated," he said of the foreign students. "There's no Campo dei Fiori here, they have to make an effort. If they want to order a margarita in English in a bar, they'd go to Rome or Florence."
Slain British student Meredith Kercher is laid to rest in London
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1) British student Meredith Kercher was laid to rest after a private funeral service in south London on Friday, nearly six weeks after she was slain in a sex attack in Perugia, Italy.
2) Several hundred mourners, including dozens of university friends, sang hymns in tribute to Kercher's life during the hour-long service that preceded the funeral at the packed Croydon Parish Church.
3) The service included an address by her brother Lyle, a poem read by her sister Stephanie, and a rendition of Kercher's favorite song, U2's "With Or Without You."
4) Among the floral tributes was a small bouquet with a card marked: "The City of Perugia."
5) Kercher, 21, was found dead with her throat cut in Perugia on Nov. 2. Her body was flown home nine days later, but her family was only given the go-ahead to bury her two weeks ago, when Italian police said they would not conduct a second autopsy.
6) Kercher was a Leeds University student who had traveled to Perugia in August to study at the city's University for Foreigners. She was assaulted and stabbed in the apartment she shared with her American flatmate, Amanda Marie Knox of Seattle in the U.S. state of Washington.
7) Knox has been detained along with her Italian then-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, and Rudy Hermann Guede.
8) On Friday, a court in Perugia ordered Guede to remain in jail while the probe continued in Kercher's slaying. Guede, an Ivory Coast national who lives in Perugia, appeared before the court at a closed-door hearing but did not make any statements, according to defense lawyer Walter Biscotti.
9) DNA testing has confirmed that Guede had sex with Kercher the night of the slaying. The 20-year-old has acknowledged he was in Kercher's room the night she died, but said he did not kill her.
10) Biscotti said the judges did not give any reason for ordering Guede to stay jailed but are expected to do so in the coming days.
11) Gruesome tales of sex and drugs surrounding the slaying have surfaced, and lurid details of their private lives gleaned from social networking Web sites filled the British tabloids after her killing.
12) Dozens of members of the media, including camera crews from Italy and the United States, gathered outside the Anglican church to cover the service.
American suspect in Perugia questioned for 6 hours by prosecutor
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1) The jailed American suspect in the slaying of a British student continued to insist Monday that she was not involved, lawyers said. Investigators said she broke into tears under questioning by prosecutors.
2) Amanda Knox "for six hours gave her version of the facts, confirming what she has already said," defense lawyer Giancarlo Costa told reporters outside of Perugia prison, where the university student from Seattle has been jailed since Nov. 6.
3) Asked by a reporter if Knox, 20, had stuck to her contention that she wasn't in the house the night her flat mate, Meredith Kercher, was slain, another defense lawyer, Luciano Ghirga, replied, "I think so."
4) Kercher's body, half-naked on the floor of her bedroom under bedcovers, was discovered in a pool of blood Nov. 2. An autopsy showed that the 21-year-old woman, who was studying at Perugia University, had been stabbed in the neck and sexually assaulted.
5) Lawyers declined to say specifically what Knox said in her questioning Monday, but they indicated she continued to deny any wrongdoing.
6) When reporters asked if Knox had declared herself innocent, Ghirga replied, "Yes, certainly."
7) Knox's boyfriend at the time of the slaying, Raffaele Sollecito, 23, who is an Italian also studying in the Umbrian town of Perugia, is also jailed as a suspect.
8) A third jailed suspect is Rudy Hermann Guede, 20, an Ivory Coast national. Guede was recently returned to Italy after being arrested in Germany. His fingerprint was found in bloodstains on Kercher's pillow, and DNA testing found that he had sex with Kercher the night of her slaying.
9) Another suspect, Congolese pub owner Diya "Patrick" Lumumba, was released from jail but has not been formally cleared. Knox at one point told investigators that Lumumba was the killer.
10) All suspects deny any wrongdoing.
11) A judge has ruled that both Knox and Sollecito can be held in jail for as long as a year while the probe continues.
12) Knox's DNA has been found on the handle of a knife that prosecutors say might have been used in the slaying, while Kercher's DNA has been found on the blade.
13) Investigators said Knox started crying when she was asked why she had accused Lumumba of the slaying. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not allowed to give details of the probe while it is still under way.
14) Following a break after the tears, Knox declined to answer any more questions, the investigators said.
Parents of American woman jailed in Italian slaying defend her
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1) The parents of an American student accused in a sensational Italian sex slaying said in an interview broadcast Friday that their daughter could never have done such a crime.
2) Amanda Knox tells her parents, "Why am I here when I didn't do anything?" her father, William Knox, said in the interview on ABC television's "Good Morning America." It was the parents' first extensive interview since the November slaying of Meredith Kercher.
3) Kercher, a 21-year-old student from Leeds University in England, was found dead in the apartment she shared with Knox in the central Italian town of Perugia where both were studying. She had been sexually assaulted and died of a knife wound to the neck.
4) Amanda Knox, a University of Washington student from Seattle, was taken into custody along with two other people in connection with the death.
5) "She says she's tired a lot," her mother, Edda Mellas, told ABC. "Jail's not easy."
6) The parents said the coverage of the case, which has portrayed their 20-year-old daughter as a sexually adventurous woman, has been unfair. "One hundred eighty degrees opposite of anything we have ever known her to be," her father said. Asked if she could have committed a crime, he said: "Never. ... It's not her."
7) Further material from the interview was to be broadcast later Friday on the network's "20-20" program.
8) Knox and her then-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, 23, were jailed Nov. 6. A judge has ruled that both can be held for as long as a year while the investigation continues.
9) The third person in custody is Rudy Hermann Guede, a native of Ivory Coast. Another suspect, Congolese pub owner Diya "Patrick" Lumumba, was released from jail but has not been formally cleared.
10) Court documents allege that Knox has changed her account, including whether she was at home or at her boyfriend's the night of the slaying.
11) But her mother told ABC her story has stayed "absolutely consistent" except for the first interrogation, when she was "the most scared that she's ever been in her entire life" and without a lawyer or an interpreter.
12) Italian investigators said that an interpreter was present at all times during the questioning, while a lawyer was not needed because Knox was not a suspect at the time.
13) ABC also interviewed Amanda Knox's sister, Deanna, who called her "the kindest person I know. She will do anything to make people happy and she cares about everyone else before herself."
Prosecutor seeks life term for Italy slay suspect
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1) Prosecutors on Saturday accused an American student of fatally stabbing her British house mate in a Satanic rite in Perugia last year and asked a court to convict and punish an alleged African accomplice with life imprisonment, defense lawyers said.
2) The American, Amanda Knox, 21, proclaimed her innocence at the closed-door hearing in the Umbrian university town and emotionally accused police of hitting her on the head and calling her a liar during an interrogation, defense lawyers said.
3) "It was expected" that prosecutors would seek a harsh penalty, said Valter Biscotti, a lawyer for Rudy Hermann Guede, the Ivorian accused in the case.
4) At his lawyers' request, a fast-track trial is being conducted for Guede. He has acknowledged being in the bedroom where Meredith Kercher's body, stabbed in the neck and lying in a pool of blood, was found in November 2007 in the house she rented with Knox.
5) Fast-track trials can sometimes result in lighter penalties. But prosecutors asked the court Saturday to convict Guede and mete out Italy's stiffest punishment -- life imprisonment. Italy does not have the death penalty.
6) The court deciding Guede's fate is also hearing arguments to determine if Knox and her former boyfriend, Italian student Raffaele Sollecito, should stand trial for the slaying. A ruling on prosecutors' request for their indictment is expected for the end of October.
7) All three suspects have repeatedly denied wrongdoing in the slaying, which took place in Perugia, a university town with a large foreign student population.
8) Prosecutors at Saturday's hearing "laid out a scenario like from some crime novel," Sollecito's lawyer, Luca Maori, said by telephone after a seven-hour hearing.
9) Prosecutors "alleged it was some kind of Satanic rite, with Amanda allegedly first touching Meredith with the point of a knife, then slitting her throat, while Sollecito held her by the shoulders, from behind, Guede held her by an arm" and tried to sexually penetrate the victim, Maori said.
10) One of Knox's lawyers, Carlo della Vedova, told reporters outside the courtroom that prosecutors had laid out "a presumed scenario" with no hard evidence that would justify a trial for his client.
11) Prosecutor Giuliano Mignini, contacted by The AP, declined to elaborate on his allegations Saturday about the slaying nor comment on his request for life imprisonment for Guede.
12) Another member of Knox's defense team, Luciano Ghirga, described the American as being "disappointed" when the prosecutors pushed for the stiffest sentence for Guede.
13) The case has received heavy publicity in Italy, in Britain, and in the United States, where Knox is a University of Washington student.
14) Knox asked permission during the closed-door hearing to make a declaration in English. "She proclaimed her innocence, and got emotional when she recalled her interrogation by police in Perugia," Ghirga said in a telephone interview.
15) The lawyer denied Italian news reports that she wept while addressing the court, but said Knox was upset as she recounted "the pressure, the aggressiveness of the police who called her a liar."
16) Maori said Knox also accused the police of hitting her on the head during her questioning.
17) Italian TV showed a brief, partial view of Knox as she given a microphone to address the court. Only her hands, busily gesticulating as she addressed the court, could be seen. There was no audio.
18) Knox and Sollecito have been jailed as suspects since shortly after the slaying. Under Italian law, they can be jailed for as long as a year during the investigation.
19) Knox and Sollecito, 24, have given conflicting statements.
20) Sollecito has said he was at his own apartment in Perugia. He said he does not remember if Knox spent the whole night with him.
21) Knox has insisted she was not at home during the slaying. But one point, she also told prosecutors she was in the house the night of the slaying and covered her ears to muffle Kercher's screams while a Congolese man who owns a pub in the town killed Kercher. The Congolese man was initially jailed, but authorities released him, saying he was no longer a suspect.
Seattle attorney helps in Amanda Knox case
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1) An attorney volunteering as a spokeswoman for supporters of Amanda Knox, a University of Washington student jailed in an Italian murder case, said Monday that Knox has been treated unfairly by the courts and the media.
2) Knox, 21, of Seattle, is accused in the November 2007 stabbing death of her house mate in the Italian university town of Perugia. Knox says she's innocent, and her friends and family say she has been mistreated by the Italian legal system.
3) "At some point there has to be some truth put forward on her behalf," said Anne Bremner, a Seattle trial lawyer.
4) Bremner said there have been too many leaks in the case, and the tabloid media has been spreading false rumors.
5) Knox, her former boyfriend and a second man are accused in the death of British student Meredith Kercher.
6) An Italian court is conducting a fast-track trial for Rudy Hermann Guede, an Ivory Coast native charged in the case. He has acknowledged being in the bedroom where Kercher's body, stabbed in the neck and lying in a pool of blood, was found.
7) The same court also is hearing arguments on whether Knox and her former boyfriend, Italian student Raffaele Sollecito, should stand trial for the slaying. A ruling is expected by the end of October.
8) All three have denied wrongdoing.
9) Bremner said Knox's supporters know there is little they can do to influence the Italian legal system, but want to make sure Knox's portrayal in the courts and media is accurate.
10) "We have an American citizen going through the Italian justice system and the friends of Amanda want to insure that the process is fair," Bremner said.
11) "There's been all kinds of leaks in the case from the get-go that contained prejudicial and misleading information about Amanda," Bremner said. "There's never been another side shown about the evidence and how she's been treated."
12) The group she represents, called "Friends of Amanda," is unhappy with the length of Knox's detention, the legal basis for her detention, and information about the case that has been leaked to the media, Bremner said.
13) "There may be a need at some point for our government to respond," Bremner said.
Murder trial in Italy: US student had a scratch
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1) An American student accused in the stabbing death of her British roommate had a scratch on her neck hours after the killing, a witness testified at the murder trial in Italy.
2) Prosecutors allege Meredith Kercher was the reluctant object of a sex game that ended violently on Nov. 1, 2007 when the British woman was fatally stabbed in the neck.
3) Laura Mezzetti, an Italian who shared an apartment with Kercher and defendant Amanda Knox, told the court on Saturday that he saw the scratch on Knox's neck, below her chin, the following day at the police station where they were waiting to be questioned but said she didn't point it out at the time because she thought investigators would notice themselves.
4) "I noticed it because it was known that Meredith had been killed by a wound to her neck," Mezzetti told the court. "I was afraid that Amanda, too, might have been wounded, I was worried and I looked at it really intensely."
5) Kercher's body had been found earlier that day in their apartment in Perugia, which was shared by a group of young women including Knox, Kercher, Mezetti and another Italian, who also has testified in the case.
6) Mezzetti said she observed Knox's scratch from a few yards (meters) away. She described the wound as "vertical, less than 1-centimeter (0.4 inches) thick," red in color and gestured that it was under her chin.
7) The prosecution had no comment on the new testimony, but after the hearing, Knox's lawyer and her father downplayed it.
8) Knox, a 21-year old from Seattle, and Raffaele Sollecito, a 24-year-old Italian who was her boyfriend at the time, are being tried on charges of murder and sexual violence. They deny wrongdoing.
9) Another man, Ivory Coast national Rudy Hermann Guede, was convicted last year on the same charges and sentenced to 30 years in prison. Guede, who had also denied wrongdoing, had requested and received a fast-track trial.
10) Mezzetti said she did not see any scratch when she saw Knox on Oct. 31, 2007, during breakfast at the apartment, and that she did not see Knox again until two days later at the police station. She said the scratch was different from a love bite, which would be "purple and more round."
11) Mezzetti told police about the scratch in November, after failing to mention it in several previous interrogations. She said she thought everybody else would have noticed it.
12) Knox's lawyer, Luciano Ghirga, said the mark was insignificant. "This is a witness giving a medical assessment," he said.
13) The defendant's father, Curt Knox, told reporters that the doctor who gave his daughter a full-body medical examination after her Nov. 6, 2007, arrest "did not make a single note related to a scratch in the neck."
14) "There is no scratch," he said, adding it was "probably a hickey."
15) Appearing in court Saturday on Valentine's Day, Amanda sported a bright T-shirt with "All You Need Is Love" scrawled across the front in large pink letters. Her father said she is a fan of the Beatles.
16) Testifying for a second straight day, Knox said she was hurt by recent testimony from witnesses, including by her Italian roommates. Witnesses said Knox did not always leave the toilet clean, prompting Kercher and other roommates to complain.
17) "I'm sincerely disappointed," she said, speaking Italian. "This cleaning issue was vastly exaggerated. I have talked about it with the other girls, but there was never conflict."
18) Knox insisted that relations in the house were good.
19) Also heard Saturday were Giacomo Silenzi and Stefano Bonassi, two Italian students who lived below the Knox and Kercher's apartment. Silenzi had started dating Kercher a few weeks before her death.
20) The two said they knew Guede, and both testified that the Ivorian had taken an interest in Knox, asking if she was dating anybody.
21) Bonassi testified that in October 2007, he woke to see Guede, Knox and Kercher together in his apartment, along with Silenzi and others. The group had met up at a bar, Silenzi said. Guede then spent the night, apparently too drunk to move, the witnesses said.
22) "She knew of him, she had been introduced. But it's not like they were pals or anything," Curt Knox said of his daughter and Guede.
23) The trial continues Feb. 27.
Conviction in murder of actor in Harry Potter film
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1) A London jury has convicted a man of murdering teenage actor Rob Knox, who had a small role in a soon-to-be released Harry Potter movie.
2) Karl Bishop, who was found guilty Wednesday, could face life in prison when sentenced for the stabbing death of 18-year-old Knox.
3) Prosecutors say Bishop killed Knox outside a bar in east London in May after Knox stepped in to protect his brother, who had been threatened by the 22-year-old.
4) Knox had just wrapped up filming on "Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince." The movie is the sixth in the Harry Potter series and is due out this summer.
5) Knox played the part of Marcus Belby, a minor character.
Witness contradicts accused in Italy murder trial
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1) A U.S. student on trial for allegedly murdering her British roommate in Italy was recognized by a witness Saturday as having been in a grocery store early on the morning after the killing.
2) The witness account contradicted testimony by defendant Amanda Knox, who said she woke up mid-morning the day after her roommate Meredith Kercher died from a stab wound to the neck.
3) Knox and her former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito are accused of killing the 21-year-old British student on the night of Nov. 1, 2007. Prosecutors say Kercher was killed between 9 p.m. and 11 p.m. during what started as a sex game. Kercher's body was found the next morning in the Perugia house she shared with Knox.
4) The two defendants deny wrongdoing. Sollecito said he spent the night at his house, and does not remember if Knox spent all or part of it with him. Knox, after conflicting statements, eventually said she was at Sollecito's house and awoke mid-morning on Nov. 2, 2007.
5) Witness Marco Quintavalle said Saturday that a young woman he identified as Knox entered his grocery store near Sollecito's house in Perugia at 7:45 a.m. on Nov. 2. He said the woman was waiting for him to open the store, and that he and she exchanged glances when she entered.
6) "It really struck me, she had a very pale face and these light eyes," Quintavalle said. "I can still see the image in my head."
7) Asked by the judge if that woman was in the courtroom, Quintavalle said he was sure it was Knox.
8) "Now I'm sure," he said, looking at her. Knox did not appear to react.
9) Quintavalle said he was not at the cash register that morning, and so was not sure if Knox had bought anything. He said he had seen Knox one or two times before at his store with Sollecito, a frequent customer, and then recognized Knox' face in newspapers and on TV days after Kercher's killing.
10) Quintavalle, who gave prosecutors the information a year later upon the suggestion of a reporter friend, said Saturday he had waited because he had "no enthusiasm about getting involved in this story."
11) Defense lawyers questioned the reliability of the witness. Carlo Dalla Vedova asked him if he could say how tall Sollecito is and what color his eyes are. Quintavalle gave an indication on the height and said he was not sure about Sollecito's eye color.
12) Knox's stepfather, Chris Mellas, said the trial so far had failed to show "any evidence that she's done anything, which is the truth."
13) "With each court session that passes she feels a little bit better," Mellas told The Associated Press before Quintavalle took the stand. Mellas has been visiting Knox in jail.
14) Other testimony Saturday focused on whether Sollecito's apartment smelled of bleach. Prosecutors say police detected the odor of bleach when they went there on Nov. 6, 2007 -- the day both defendants were arrested.
15) Investigators allege the defendants might have used it to eliminate any possible trace on any item that might have been at the death scene.
16) A woman from Ecuador who used to be the cleaner in Sollecito's apartment told the court she never used bleach.
17) Rosa Natalia Guaman Fernandez De Calle said nothing seemed different in Sollecito's house when she last went there on Nov. 5, 2007, and was asked to clean "as usual." She said she didn't use or smell bleach that day, but could not be sure whether bleach was among the cleaning products in the house.
18) Prosecutors say it is significant that bleach was not used by the cleaning woman, but was smelled the day after by police.
19) A lawyer for Sollecito, Luca Maori, offered the opposing view. He noted that the woman did not smell the bleach even despite being in the house for two hours, suggesting police might have wrongly identified the odor.
20) Last year, a third defendant, Rudy Hermann Guede of the Ivory Coast, was convicted and sentenced to 30 years in prison at a separate trial. He also denies wrongdoing.
21) Police said this week that intruders apparently got into the house where Kercher and Knox lived. On Saturday, Italian media reported that a pillow and the mattress in Kercher's room had disappeared, apparently during the intrusion. Authorities did not immediately comment on the reports.
US suspect ' s court demeanor in the spotlight
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1) She grins and chats. On Valentine's Day, she sported a T-shirt that read "All You Need Is Love." And one of the first things she said in court was about a rabbit shaped sex toy.
2) Amanda Knox faces life in prison if convicted of killing Meredith Kercher, a British exchange student who was her roommate in this picturesque university town. However, her breezy behavior in hearings over the last three months has set tongues wagging in Italy and abroad.
3) Knox's family insists she has always been respectful in court and knows full well the weight of the charges against her.
4) The 21-year-old former University of Washington student is being tried with her ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito for the 2007 killing that mesmerized Italy with its tales of sex and drugs. Both deny wrongdoing.
5) Knox was in an exchange program in Perugia and sharing an apartment with Kercher, a 21-year-old student from Leeds University in England, when the Briton was found stabbed to death in the house on Nov. 2, 2007.
6) Prosecutors allege that Kercher was killed during what began as a sex game, with Sollecito holding her by the shoulders from behind while Knox touched her with the point of a knife.
7) They say a third man, Ivory Coast national Rudy Hermann Guede, tried to sexually assault Kercher and then Knox fatally stabbed her in the throat. Guede was convicted of murder in a separate trial last year and sentenced to 30 years in prison.
8) The case, and particularly Knox's alleged role, has made headlines in Italy and abroad and media outlets still converge here for hearings held most Fridays and Saturdays.
9) Photo and TV coverage of the trial has focused on Knox's calm demeanor, her chats with the interpreter during breaks and in one case even her fashion sense, when she wore a bright T-shirt with "All You Need Is Love" scrawled in large pink letters on Valentine's Day.
10) In contrast, co-defendant Sollecito, 25, has appeared more tense and kept a lower-profile; he faces the cameras only when briefly waving to his family sitting in front of them.
11) Italian and European reports have buzzed with remarks.
12) "She is defiant and he, fearful," summarized Italy's respected daily Corriere della Sera the day after the opening hearing.
13) "The Foxy Knoxy show: Smiling murder suspect makes grand entrance as trial begins," read a title on the online version of Britain's Daily Mail, which also described Knox as walking "like a Hollywood diva sashaying along the red carpet."
14) Knox's behavior also raised eyebrows before the trial opened, with a witness recently testifying in court that the American turned cartwheels and did splits at the police station in the hours that followed the murder.
15) Other witnesses have told the court that Knox made faces at Sollecito at the police station, crossing her eyes and sticking her tongue out, while also giggling and kissing him.
16) "Her behavior has never been adequate, given the seriousness of what happened," lawyer Francesco Maresca, who represents Kercher's family, said Wednesday. "I criticize a superficial and inappropriate behavior. There's a girl who died brutally, we could use some respect."
17) However, criminologist Saverio Fortunato says Knox's apparently carefree behavior could be a psychological "reaction to the pain" of being involved in a murder case.
18) "It could be a sign of malaise and confusion," Fortunato said. "Facing the wounds of a trial can push you to adopt a certain behavior to fight off the fear, which can be interpreted from the outside as inappropriate."
19) In recent addresses to the court, Knox spoke in Italian and sounded confident, even in her first public statement when she casually explained the presence of a pink rabbit-shaped vibrator in her Perugia house, saying it was "a joke" and a present from a friend.
20) In a statement e-mailed to The Associated Press, Knox's family described the American as "generally a positive person," who tries to "see something positive in everybody and every situation."
21) "When she comes to the courtroom, she is generally happy to see familiar faces," the statement said. "The media seems more interested in what she's wearing or how she acts for brief moments ... than in the lack of evidence against her or her respectful, attentive manner during the court proceedings."
22) Indeed, both Knox and Sollecito sit quietly near their lawyers and follow proceedings intently, taking notes and referencing in Italian law books. Two prison guards are stationed behind them at all times.
23) On Friday, coroner Luca Lalli confirmed his earlier findings by testifying that the Briton died from a stab wound to the neck. He said it cannot be determined if she was raped, though bruises and cuts on her face, neck, hands and legs suggest violence during intercourse.
24) Maresca said photographs taken during the autopsy were shown during the closed-doors session and Knox "looked away, while Sollecito occasionally looked up."
25) Knox's mother, Edda Mellas, said her daughter was "upset" and "just couldn't watch."
26) Later Friday, local shop owner Carlo Maria Scotto di Rinaldi testified he saw Knox and Sollecito kissing and hugging in his lingerie shop the day after Kercher's body was found.
27) He said Knox bought "a top and a G-string" and the couple talked about having "hot sex" once they got home.
28) The two defendants have largely ignored each other since the trial opened Jan. 16, but recently they exchanged smiles, whispers and gestured from a distance.
29) Prosecutors say Knox's DNA was on the handle of a knife found at Sollecito's house that might have been used in the slaying and the victim's DNA was found on the blade.
30) It's not clear how, if at all, Knox's behavior will influence the eight-member jury, which is expected to reach a verdict after the summer.
31) "Juries can be influenced by the media, but there is also the presiding judge," who as an expert should be able to see through a defendant's behavior in court, Fortunato said. "I don't think that the trial should revolve around this frivolity."
Italian court eyes crime scene in US student trial
(APW_ENG_20090418.0598)
1) The Italian court trying an American student and her former boyfriend for the murder of a British woman inspected the apartment house in Perugia on Saturday where the victim was stabbed to death in 2007.
2) American Amanda Knox, 21, and her former Italian boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, who was also studying in the university town in Umbria, are being tried for the slaying of Knox's roommate, Meredith Kercher. Both have denied all wrongdoing.
3) The body of 21-year-old Kercher, stabbed in the neck, was found in a pool of blood in her bedroom of the rented flat in November 2007.
4) The house inspection by the court was closed to journalists. Spectators, however, could see the judge, jurors, prosecutors and defense attorneys arrive and begin inspecting the exterior of the building, including a window in the rear that had been found broken by investigators when the body was discovered.
5) After visiting the interior of the apartment, the judge and jury left without talking to reporters, but prosecutor Manuela Comodi told journalists afterward that the visit was important. "The court studied that interior and exterior of the house," and took note of the position of the bedroom window, Comodi said.
6) Prosecutors have alleged that Kercher's attackers broke the window from inside in a clumsy attempt to fake a break-in.
7) Defendants in Italian trials have the right not to attend sessions. Knox and Sollecito attended Saturday morning's court session but did not come to the afternoon session at the crime scene.
8) The morning session in Perugia's courthouse, the first hearing since an Easter vacation break, also was closed to reporters.
9) Prosecutors allege the victim was killed during what began as a sex game, with Sollecito holding Kercher from behind while Knox touched her with the point of a knife. Prosecutors say a third person, Rudy Hermann Guede, tried to sexually assault Kercher and then Knox fatally stabbed her in the throat.
10) Guede, an Ivory Coast national, has been convicted of Kercher's murder in a separate, fast-track trial and sentenced to 30 years in prison. He, too, had denied wrongdoing.
11) One of Sollecito's lawyers, Giulia Bongiorno, was quoted as describing the atmosphere inside the house as "ghostly." The Italian news agency ANSA also quoted her as saying that "there are still a lot of knives" in the apartment.
12) Knox's father, Curt Knox, remained outside the house during the inspection and later told reporters that beyond what was happening to his daughter in the case, what happened to Kercher was a true "tragedy," ANSA reported.
13) Lawyers in the case said the morning session included testimony from a forensics doctor called by the prosecution. The Italian news agency ANSA quoted an attorney representing the victim's family as saying the expert witness testified there was probably an attempt to strangle Kercher before she was stabbed.
14) ANSA quoted Kercher family lawyer Francesco Maresca, as well as two defense attorneys, as giving conflicting interpretations of the doctor's testimony about whether the knife that prosecutors say could be the murder weapon matched the victim's wounds.
Defendant helps in court in Italy slay trial
(APW_ENG_20090508.1264)
1) An Italian student on trial with his American ex-girlfriend for allegedly killing her British roommate helped prosecutors on Friday show a crime scene video in which police find potentially damaging evidence, Italian media said.
2) Raffaele Sollecito -- who earned a computer science degree while jailed in the investigation -- offered to help when prosecutors had difficulty using a computer to play the video in court, one of his lawyers, Giulia Bongiorno told state TV after the courtroom session ended in Perugia.
3) The defense has claimed that some evidence might have been contaminated by how it was gathered at the crime scene, and the defendants' lawyers are expected to later try to attack the gathering-methods later in the trial, when the defense calls its witnesses.
4) Sollecito and co-defendant Amanda Knox are accused in the 2007 murder of 21-year-old Meredith Kercher.
5) All three were studying at Perugia's university when Kercher's body was found with stab wounds in a pool of blood in her bedroom of the rented apartment she shared with Knox.
6) Prosecutors allege Kercher was stabbed during what began as a sex game.
7) Both Sollecito and Knox have denied all wrongdoing.
8) The video played Friday by prosecutors shows the Perugia police crime scene squad finding the clasp end of Kercher's bra. Prosecutors say Sollecito's DNA was found on the piece.
9) Sollecito used a defense team computer to help prosecutors show some of the video in court, the Italian news reports said.
10) Trial began in January for Knox, a 21-year-old from Seattle, and Sollecito, 24. If convicted, they could face life in prison. They are also accused of sexual violence.
11) A third person, Rudy Hermann Guede, a national of the Ivory Coast, was convicted of the murder in a separate trial.
12) Friday's session was largely taken up by testimony by various police scientific squad experts.
13) A fingerprint expert, Giuseppe Privitera, testified for the prosecution that 35 fingerprints and 13 palm prints were found and identified in the house where Kercher was slain, the Italian news agency ANSA reported.
14) Of these, five prints were Sollecito's, one was Knox's, 17 were the victim's, and most of the rest were of two Italian females students who also shared the house and of Meredith's boyfriend, the expert testified, ANSA said. One bloodied print, of a palm, was found on a pillow near the victim and was identified to be that of Guede, while four prints found in the victim's room were never identified, ANSA said the witness testified.
Witness: weapon and wound not compatible
(APW_ENG_20090706.1162)
1) A coroner testified Monday in the trial of American Amanda Knox that a knife believed to have been used in the slaying of a British student is "not compatible" with the victim's stab wound, an Italian news report said.
2) Carlo Torre was giving evidence for the defense in the trial of Knox and co-defendant Raffaele Sollecito for the 2007 death of Meredith Kercher in Perugia, central Italy. They deny wrongdoing.
3) Torre told the court the neck wound was made with a knife with a 3-inch (8-centimeter) blade, while prosecutors maintain a 6 1/2-inch (16.5-centimeter) knife found at Sollecito's home could be the murder weapon, the Italian news agency ANSA reported.
4) He also said there is no evidence that Kercher, who shared a rented flat with Knox, had been assaulted by more than one person. One man has already been convicted of her murder.
5) Knox, who has been jailed since shortly after the slaying, will spend a second birthday in jail when she turns 22 on Thursday. Her mother, Edda Mellas, told reporters after Monday's session that Knox will be receiving many greeting cards as well as books and T-shirts for her birthday.
6) Mellas predicted it would be her daughter's last birthday behind bars. Knox's family has expressed confidence she will be acquitted.
Last defense for Knox ex-boyfriend in Italy trial
(APW_ENG_20091130.0382)
1) One of Italy's top criminal defense lawyers is making final arguments for the ex-boyfriend of American student Amanda Knox in the trial for the 2007 murder of a British student in Perugia.
2) Giulia Bongiorno told the court Monday that her Italian client, Raffaele Sollecito, wound up being wrongly accused of murder because of a bloody footprint at the scene.
3) Bongiorno won fame for successfully defending former Premier Giulio Andreotti against charges of aiding the Sicilian Mafia years ago.
4) Sollecito and Knox are accused of murdering Meredith Kercher in her bedroom in the rented house she shared with the Knox. They deny wrongdoing.
5) One man has already been convicted of Kercher's murder.
6) The court says a verdict is expected later this week.
Knox: I ' m no murderer
(APW_ENG_20091204.0170)
1) American student Amanda Knox tried one last time to convince the Italian court trying her for murder that she is not a killer, urging jurors not to brand her with "the mask of an assassin."
2) Knox spoke Thursday at the end of a trial that has exposed some of the most intimate details of her life, with prosecutors depicting her as a promiscuous and manipulative she-devil who brutally murdered her British roommate in Perugia, Meredith Kercher.
3) The trial, in which Knox's ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito figures as a co-defendant, is wrapping up after almost a year. Thursday's session was devoted to rebuttals by defense lawyers and the prosecution, and the eight members of the jury are expected to begin deliberations as early as Friday.
4) Standing up, her voice breaking as she fought back tears, the 22-year-old American told the court that she feels "vulnerable" and fears losing herself after two years in jail.
5) "I have written on a piece of paper ... that I was afraid of losing myself," she said, speaking Italian. "I am scared of being branded what I am not," she said. "I am scared of having the mask of an assassin forced onto me."
6) Knox and Sollecito, an Italian, are charged with murder and sexual assault in the 2007 slaying. Prosecutors are seeking life sentences, while both defendants are pleading innocent. Any verdict can be appealed by both parties.
7) Both Knox, a 22-year-old student from Seattle, and Sollecito, 25, have been jailed since shortly after the slaying.
8) The brutal murder has made headlines worldwide, bringing the lives of the defendants under the spotlight. Sordid details of sex and drugs have been dug by the media that have descended on this university town as much as discussed in court.
9) The jury, which includes two judges, is not sequestered.
10) During the trial, about a hundred witnesses have taken the stand in the frescoed rooms just steps away from the medieval fountain that is a symbol of the town: relatives of the victim described Kercher's love of Italy, her friends spoke of the last hours before she died, acquaintances described the relations between the two women.
11) Knox herself has taken the witness stand, giving a composed testimony months ago during which she called the victim a friend and offered her alibi, saying she spent the night at Sollecito's house where the two watched a video.
12) According to the prosecution, Kercher and Knox had different personalities -- the victim a serious student; the alleged murderer a promiscuous youth of dubious hygiene -- and had grown apart so much that Knox wanted to get back at her for being "smug."
13) The prosecutors contend that on the night of the murder, Nov. 1, 2007, Knox and Sollecito met at the apartment where Kercher and Knox lived. They say a fourth person was there, Rudy Hermann Guede, an Ivory Coast citizen who has been convicted in the murder and sentenced to 30 years in prison. Guede, who is appealing his conviction, maintains he was in the house the night of the murder but did not kill Kercher.
14) The prosecution says that Knox and Kercher started arguing and the three brutally attacked and sexually assaulted the Briton. They were acting, according to the prosecution, under "the fumes of drugs and possibly alcohol."
15) Kercher's body, her throat slit, was found in a pool of blood the next day at the apartment.
16) Francesco Maresca, a lawyer representing Kercher's family, argued in his rebuttals Thursday that the Briton was killed because she knew her murderers and would be a threat to them if she survived.
17) "Meredith died because after she was attacked, threatened, wounded, and after a violent sexual approach, they needed her to remain silent," he said.
18) Knox says Kercher was a friend whose death shocked her. Defense lawyers have described her as a smart, cheerful woman, at one point even comparing her to film character Amelie, the innocent and dreamy girl in the 2001 French movie of the same title. That is the film Knox and Sollecito say they were watching on his computer the night of the murder.
19) Sollecito, also addressing the court Thursday, insisted that no motive had emerged to explain his alleged role in the slaying. He disputed the prosecution's view that he was submissive toward Amanda and had been manipulated by her.
20) "Not having found a motive to explain why I would kill, they said I was a sort of dog on a leash," he said. "If Amanda had asked me to do something I didn't agree with, I would have said no. Let alone if she had asked me to do something as terrible as killing a girl."
21) DNA traces that the prosecutors have linked to the defendants have been disputed in court. The defense lawyers contend that traces are either two small to be attributed with certainty or that evidence may have been inadvertently contaminated.
22) The prosecution maintains that a a 6 1/2-inch (16.5-centimeter) knife they found at Sollecito's house could be the murder weapon. The knife has Kercher's DNA on the blade and Knox's on the handle, they say.
23) But defense lawyers argue that the knife is too big to match Kercher's wounds and that the amount of what prosecutors say is Kercher's DNA is too low to be attributed with certainty.
24) The defense has largely focused on the lack of evidence and what they say is the absence of a clear motive.
25) "We all are hopeful and we trust these judges and the jury to know that they are going to not put two innocent kids in jail for a crime that they didn't commit," Knox's mother, Edda Mellas, told reporters after the hearing.
26) Knox has given contradicting versions, saying at one point that she was home the night of the murder and had heard Kercher's screams and accusing a Congolese man of the killing. The man, Patrick Diya Lumumba, owns a pub in Perugia where Knox worked. He was jailed briefly but was later cleared and is seeking defamation damages from Knox.
27) Knox said police pressure led her to initially accuse an innocent man.
28) A verdict is expected Friday or Saturday, and Kercher's family is expected to be in court.
Italy: No issues with US over Knox verdict
(APW_ENG_20091207.0999)
1) The murder conviction of U.S. student Amanda Knox has not damaged U.S.-Italian relations, despite suggestions the verdict was tainted by anti-American sentiment, a top Italian diplomat said Monday.
2) After a tense weekend, the diplomat sought to quell speculation of a full-blown crisis, saying that no criticism had come from the U.S. secretary of state.
3) "Who criticized?" asked Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini, speaking to reporters in Brussels. "Certainly not Hillary Clinton. Let's not create confusion."
4) Clinton, speaking Sunday, said she had not looked into the case but would meet with anybody who had concerns.
5) In Washington, State Department spokesman Ian C. Kelly said Clinton was interested in the case and intended to speak with Sen. Maria Cantwell, a Democrat from Washington state, who has questioned the fairness of the trial.
6) Asked whether the State Department believed Knox had been treated fairly, Kelly said, "I don't have any indications to the contrary. I do know that our embassy in Rome was very closely involved in this. They visited Amanda Knox. They have monitored the trial."
7) He added: "We are not going to comment too much on an ongoing legal process."
8) Knox was convicted over the weekend of sexually assaulting and murdering her British roommate, Meredith Kercher, and sentenced to 26 years in jail.
9) Her co-defendant and former boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito of Italy, was found guilty of the same charges and sentenced to 25 years in prison. All were studying in Perugia at the time of the 2007 slaying.
10) Knox and Sollecito have been behind bars since shortly after the killing. They have maintained their innocence and plan to appeal.
11) The jury in Perugia must issue the rationale for its ruling within the next 90 days.
12) The verdict shocked the Knox family and other supporters of the 22-year-old from Seattle. They blamed the decision largely on what they called prosecutors' character assassination of Knox.
13) Sen. Cantwell said in a statement that she had "serious questions about the Italian justice system and whether anti-Americanism tainted this trial."
14) She said "other flaws in the Italian justice system on display in this case" included negligent handling of evidence and harsh treatment of Knox after her arrest, a charge Italian police have denied.
15) Many noted that the jury, two judges and six civilians, had not been sequestered during the yearlong trial, and could therefore be influenced by news coverage.
16) Media interest in the case has been intense since Kercher's body was found in a pool of blood Nov. 2, 2007, in the apartment she shared with Knox.
17) Saturday's verdict was delivered in the middle of the night in a packed courtroom, with hundreds of cameras and photographers assembled outside.
18) Knox has alternately been depicted as a cold-blooded "she-devil" or an innocent foreigner who fell victim of a poor justice system. In the United States, the coverage has been largely favorable to the American and critical of the Italian handling of the case.
19) Lawyers say misunderstandings were at least partially due to differences between the U.S. and Italian justice systems.
20) For example, the Italian system gives the presiding judge a great deal of discretion over the use of circumstantial evidence, said a criminal lawyer, Manrico Collaza. But he noted that allowing the next level of appeal, as Italy does, to deal with the facts of the case -- and not be limited to issues of law -- acts as a balance.
21) "Many defendants have been saved by it," Collaza said.
22) Massimo Consolini, an expert on international law, said criticism of the Italian judicial system has centered on the length of trials that has led to many charges being dropped because of a statute of limitations.
23) "It's not that one doesn't get a fair trial," he said. It's about "how long it takes to get justice."
24) He said "the prospects are good" for Knox to win a change on appeal.
25) It will be months before the appeals can begin, and even longer to complete them. Knox and Sollecito might well have spent three years in jail by then. Sollecito was moved to a new prison in Terni on Monday, said one of his attorneys, Luca Maori.
26) Knox was "tranquil" when she was visited Monday by some family members, said one of her lawyers, Luciano Ghirga. She has asked for permission to work in the prison laundry, and also intends to continue her education by pursuing correspondence courses with the University of Washington, the lawyer told The Associated Press.
27) Some in Italy were annoyed by criticism in the U.S. media and fired back.
28) Corriere della Sera, the country's leading newspaper, said Monday that in America, "the passport is more important than an alibi."
29) "The (U.S.) administration cannot close Guantanamo, yet it finds the time to think about Perugia," the newspaper said.
30) Other cases in the past have stirred tension between the two countries, including the 2005 shooting death of an Italian intelligence officer in Iraq at the hands of a U.S. soldier.
31) In 1998, after a U.S. Marine jet sliced a ski gondola's cables in northern Italy killing 20 people, a U.S. military jury acquitted the pilot of manslaughter. (The pilot was later sentenced to six months in jail and was dismissed from the Marines for helping to destroy a videotape of the flight.)
32) More recently, an Italian court convicted in absentia 23 Americans -- most of them CIA agents -- on charges of kidnapping an Egyptian terror suspect.
Jailed Amanda Knox tells AP that she ' s scared
(APW_ENG_20091213.0527)
1) Amanda Knox sounded casual, surprised even, by the simple question as it came through the door of her prison cell in English on Sunday: "How are you?"
2) "OK, thanks. How are you guys?" said the American student, who had been sentenced eight days earlier to 26 years in prison for the murder of her British roommate. But minutes later, Knox confided, in answer to a question from an Associated Press reporter in her cell: "I am scared because I don't know what is going on."
3) The 22-year-old, who is a cause celebre in the United States among those who contend she was wrongly convicted by the Perugia court, received a 10-minute visit inside the cell by two Italian lawmakers, prison officials and a pair of reporters in Capanne prison on the outskirts of Perugia.
4) Knox has been jailed for two years since she was arrested a few days after the slaying of Meredith Kercher in the house the two students shared in this medieval town.
5) Kercher's body was found in a pool of blood with her throat slit on Nov. 2, 2007, in the bedroom of the house in Perugia, a university town in Umbria, central Italy. Prosecutors said the Leeds University student was slain the previous night.
6) Three people, including Knox's Italian former boyfriend, have been convicted of sexual assault and murder.
7) "I am waiting and always hoping," Knox said, switching from English into Italian for the delegation. "I don't understand many things, but I have to accept them, things that for me don't always seem very fair."
8) Knox immediately came to the door of the 9-square-meter (nearly 100-sq.foot) two-bed cell when she heard the first words in English.
9) Toward the end of the visit, the woman from Washington state recalled her emotions on Dec. 5, when shortly after midnight the judge read out the verdict after a nearly yearlong trial: "I was feeling horrendous" upon being convicted.
10) "The guards helped me out. They held me all night," she said.
11) Knox's ex-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, who was given a 25-year-sentence, is now in another prison. Both insist they are innocent, as does a third defendant, Ivory Coast national Rudy Guede, who was convicted in a separate trial.
12) Defendants in Italian trials can pursue appeals, and Knox's lawyers have expressed hope she will be acquitted in an appeals trial.
13) Knox looked relieved when Italian parliamentary deputy Rocco Girlanda, in the delegation, recounted the unrelated case of a young man also convicted of murder at the first trial but exonerated during the appeal.
14) In Italian jails, inmates can wear their own clothing, and Knox wore a gray-and-white-flecked turtleneck sweater, black legging trousers, white socks and black slippers. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail.
15) The visitors, who included a reporter from the Italian news agency ANSA, were not allowed to ask Knox questions about the trial itself. No cameras or tape recorders were permitted.
16) Knox spoke about her affection for her family and her determination to continue her university studies, the reason she came to Perugia a few months before Kercher's slaying.
17) "I believe in my family. They are telling me to stay calm," Knox said. Her family, as well as a senator from her home state, Maria Cantwell, have spearheaded a vigorous campaign to convince Italian authorities she is innocent.
18) The visit was arranged by Fondazione Italia USA, which promotes close relations between the two countries, in an effort to heal any rift over accusations that Italy's justice system is unfair.
19) "My family is the most important thing for me. I also miss going to classes," she said. "I miss stimulating conversations."
20) She said she is in contact with her professors. "We are trying to work out how I can talk to them," she added, noting that while she can write letters from prison, e-mail access is forbidden.
21) Knox's cell mate, who has been identified by other lawmakers in previous visits as a 53-year-old American woman from New Orleans serving a four-year sentence for a drug conviction, wasn't present during the visit.
22) The cell includes a private bathroom with shower, toilet and bidet.
23) Shortly after her visitors left the cell, just before lunch time, Knox sat on her bed and was reading some handwritten papers. When she heard the delegation leaving the corridor, she looked up, waved and said, "Ciao."
24) TVs and newspapers are available, although Knox said she doesn't watch television or read the newspapers.
25) The prison was decked out for the holidays, with Christmas trees. During a short tour, the delegation saw a hairdresser, whose services inmates can use once a week.
26) A pingpong table is among the recreation facilities.
Knox family to start appeal process in Italy
(APW_ENG_20100305.0655)
1) The family of Amanda Knox has asked lawyers to begin their appeal of the American's murder conviction in Italy after reviewing the court's motivation for the verdict.
2) The judges who convicted Knox and co-defendant Raffaele Sollecito in December issued the reasons behind the ruling this week.
3) They found no planning or animosity toward the victim, British student Meredith Kercher. They saw the killing as a result of accidental circumstances in what had started as a sexual assault by another man, Rudy Hermann Guede, an Ivorian also convicted for the 2007 murder.
4) Knox's family said in a statement Thursday night that "there is a lot of conjecture in these motivations," and that "there is a substantial basis for the appeal."
5) Knox was sentenced to 26 years, Sollecito to 25.
Italy murder convict blames Knox and ex-boyfriend
(APW_ENG_20100311.1196)
1) A man convicted in the 2007 slaying of a British student has written a letter implicating his co-defendants and denying he had ever said they had nothing to do with the murder.
2) Rudy Hermann Guede sent the letter to Italian TV station Mediaset on Thursday.
3) In it, Guede spoke of the "horrible assassination" of Meredith Kercher by his two co-defendants, Raffaele Sollecito and Amanda Knox, according to Mediaset.
4) Knox and Sollecito were convicted last year of murdering Kercher in the Perugia apartment she and Knox shared. Guede was convicted in an earlier fast-track trial. All three deny wrongdoing and are appealing their convictions.
5) Over the weekend, one of Guede's prison-mates, Mario Alessi, claimed that Guede had told him that Knox and Sollecito weren't at the scene the night of the murder and had nothing to do with Kercher's death.
6) In his letter, Guede called Alessi a "sick mind" and said he had never confided anything to him.
7) Guede's lawyer, Nicodemo Gentile, confirmed the contents of the letter when reached Thursday by The Associated Press. He stressed that Guede, in referring to Knox and Sollecito's alleged involvement, was merely citing what the Perugia court had determined in convicting them.
New book gives intimate portrait of convicted Knox
(APW_ENG_20101017.0230)
1) Amanda Knox, the American student convicted in Italy of murdering her British roommate, is quoted as saying in a new book that she'd rather not be famous for the slaying and that her days in jail feel like "limbo" -- suspended between her old life and her hopes for the future.
2) Knox talks about her aspirations to marry and adopt children, and her interests in writing and studying languages in a series of jailhouse conversations with an Italian lawmaker who visited her over the past year. The conversations serve as the basis for the book.
3) The 23-year-old Knox was convicted in December of murder and sexual assault in the 2007 death of her housemate, British student Meredith Kercher. She was sentenced to 26 years in prison by a court in Perugia, central Italy.
4) Knox's former boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito of Italy, was convicted alongside Knox and sentenced to 25 years in prison. A third man, Rudy Hermann Guede, an Ivory Coast citizen, was convicted in a separate, earlier trial and sentenced to 30 years in prison -- which was cut to 16 years on appeal.
5) All three have maintained their innocence.
6) The book "Take Me With You - Talks with Amanda Knox in Prison" by lawmaker Rocco Girlanda comes out Tuesday, about a month before Knox's appeal begins Nov. 24. A lawyer for the Kercher family called it "inappropriate" and unnecessary.
7) "We certainly don't feel there was a need for this book," Kercher family attorney Francesco Maresca said.
8) The book is one of many on a case that has fascinated audiences on both sides of the Atlantic. But unlike the others, it does not discuss Kercher's murder.
9) Knox is quoted as mentioning Kercher's name only once -- to say on the day of the discovery of "Meredith's case" she was supposed to go on a trip to a nearby town with Sollecito.
10) Instead, the book focuses on Knox's personality, her childhood in Seattle, her hopes for post-prison life. The conversations range from mundane topics -- movies and bike-riding -- to wider subjects -- literature and religion -- and even touch on the possibility of alien life in the universe.
11) The book is being published in Italian and as an e-book in English by Piemme, a publishing house within the Mondadori media empire. The Associated Press was given an advance copy exclusively among international media.
12) Knox says she would like to get married but "must also find the person," and would adopt children rather than giving birth because "there are a lot of kids in this world who have no one."
13) She speaks of the letters she received in jail, including marriage proposals.
14) "Everybody tells me, 'You're famous.' And I answer, 'I'm not Angelina Jolie!'" she is quoted as saying. "How ugly to be famous for this. I would have preferred to be (famous) for something I built, I achieved."
15) At another point, Knox says "being in here is like being in a limbo."
16) "You live a little bit between the memory of life the way it was before, your hopes for tomorrow -- and trying as hard as you can not to feel like you're in here," she says.
17) Girlanda says he kept diaries of the some 20 Italian-language conversations he has had with Knox since her conviction. Girlanda, who heads a foundation that promotes ties between Italy and the United States, said he started meeting with Knox in a bid to help offset the diplomatic fallout the explosive case had created.
18) The lawmaker said he was curious to know the person behind the public persona, and never talked to Knox's parents, friends or lawyers.
19) "I wanted to know Amanda, I wasn't interested in Amanda Knox," Girlanda told the AP. He insisted the girl he had come to know was different from the "sex, drugs and rock and roll" image depicted by some in the press.
20) Knox was described by the prosecution as a manipulative, cold-blooded she-devil who had grown apart from Kercher. Knox insisted she was friends with the victim and was shocked by her death.
21) The attorney for the Kercher family, Maresca, said he had not read the book but understood the author was trying to portray Knox as a profound, smart girl who as such could not possibly have been guilty.
22) But Maresca maintained that conversations which took place years after the crime aren't necessarily indicative of a person's true character.
23) "Three years of prison -- and three years in a life in general -- can change a person," Maresca said. "People can appear different from what they really are -- or can even genuinely have changed."
24) Kercher's body was found in a pool of blood with her throat slit on Nov. 2, 2007, in the bedroom of the house she shared with Knox while the two were exchange students in Perugia. Knox and Sollecito were arrested a few days later.
25) Prosecutors say on the night of the murder, Knox and Sollecito met at the apartment and Guede was also there. The prosecution said Knox and Kercher started arguing, and Knox joined the two men in brutally attacking and sexually assaulting the Briton while being under the influence of drugs.
26) Maresca has called the long prison sentences fair, saying they had satisfied Kercher's bereaved family.
Knox has another chance as appeals opens in Italy
(APW_ENG_20101123.0525)
1) After three years in prison, Amanda Knox is returning to court for a second chance at freedom.
2) The American student's appeals trial opens Wednesday in this Medieval city, with lawyers hoping they can use new evidence to clear her in the killing of her British roommate.
3) There's a risk: If her conviction is upheld, she could face an even harsher sentence.
4) Lawyers for the 23-year-old Knox are seeking a full review of the case, and will try to introduce new witnesses. In December, Knox was convicted of sexually assaulting and murdering Meredith Kercher, and sentenced to 26 years in prison. She has always maintained her innocence.
5) The case captured the world's imagination and turned the photogenic Knox into a media sensation. She has been the subject of countless articles, several books and even a movie in which her character is played by TV star Hayden Panettiere.
6) It has also proved very divisive, with the U.S. media often depicting Knox as an innocent woman caught in a judicial inferno, while Italian and British newspapers have cast her as a sex-crazed liar.
7) The new trial, to be held in the same frescoed courtroom as the first one, will bring Knox back in the spotlight. Also on trial is Raffaele Sollecito, an Italian who was Knox's boyfriend at the time of the murder and has been convicted of the same charges and sentenced to 25 years in prison.
8) In the first trial, Knox mostly appeared confident and collected. She would nod and smile to the court upon entering the room and talk to her lawyers during breaks. On a Valentine's Day hearing, she sported a bright T-shirt with "All You Need Is Love" scrawled in large pink letters.
9) Now, her lawyers describe her as worn out.
10) "The long pre-emptive custody has broken down the young woman," Knox's lawyers said in a motion filed earlier this month as part of their appeal. Attorney Luciano Ghirga described Knox as "worried, tense" ahead of the appeal, and "exhausted by three years in prison."
11) Press reports have described Knox as being involved in prison activities, such as staging plays. An Italian lawmaker who has often visited her, Rocco Girlanda, has said she largely spends time reading books, studying languages and writing poems and fiction. In an interview with The Associated Press last month, Girlanda said Knox had appeared to have matured as a result of her "difficult life" in prison.
12) Knox has been behind bars in Perugia since Nov. 6, 2007, four days after Kercher's body was found in a pool of blood, her throat slit, in the apartment Knox and Kercher shared as exchange students in Perugia. Forensic experts said Kercher was killed on the night on Nov. 1.
13) Prosecutors, who had sought a life sentence in the first trial, have also appealed the ruling, as they can in Italy.
14) "There is an appeal both from the defendants and the prosecutor, so it is a situation where potentially there could be also an increase of penalty," said Chiara Magrini, a legal expert and professor at John Cabot University. "This is a situation where everything could happen."
15) The opening hearing Wednesday is expected to be quick and devoted to procedural matters, lawyers said. Both defendants are expected to attend. The case is then to be adjourned, likely to Dec. 11.
16) The defense lawyers for Knox and Sollecito are seeking a full review of the forensic evidence, including disputed DNA evidence that was found on a knife allegedly used in the murder and on the clasp of Kercher's bra. The defense maintains that DNA traces were inconclusive, and also contended they may have been contaminated when analyzed.
17) Whether Presiding Judge Claudio Pratillo Hellman will accept these requests will be closely watched as a possible indication of how he will handle the trial. As in the first trial, the verdict is up to the judge a fellow magistrate and a jury of six.
18) If the court does admit new evidence and witnesses, then "the logical conclusion seems to be that they are not happy -- I am not saying with the decision, but with the evidence that was collected in the first trial," Magrini said.
19) The decision is not expected to be made on Wednesday but at later hearings.
20) In their appeal motion, Knox's lawyers were sharply critical of the verdict, maintaining it was based on mere hypotheses and saying that "the motive, a fundamental aspect of a serious crime, is basically absent."
21) They denounced an "obscene media campaign" against their client, accused police of focusing their investigation into the slaying on the assumption that Knox was guilty, and said the court made the same mistake.
22) "The verdict is constructed almost as if to find the evidence to support a theory" they wrote in the motion.
23) During the first trial, the prosecutors failed to provide a "smoking gun," and also lacked a motive.
24) Prosecutors did present circumstantial evidence and forensic evidence linking both Knox and Sollecito to the crime, and the court in their verdict supported this evidence against the defense's claims. They described Knox as a manipulative, promiscuous woman whose personality clashed with Kercher's.
25) In their December ruling, the judges said they found no inconsistencies in the prosecution's case. The killing was carried out without planning or animosity, but still it was the result of a brutal sexual assault, the court said in a document that was released in March and summed up the reasoning behind the verdict.
26) According to the court's reconstruction of the night of the murder, Knox and Sollecito were at the house with a fourth person, Rudy Hermann Guede, an Ivory Coast citizen who has also been convicted of murder in separate proceedings. Guede's presence at the house was likely the result of a casual encounter, the court said.
27) According to the document, Knox and Sollecito assisted Guede's sexual desire for Kercher, becoming her brutal assailants together with the Ivorian man and ultimately killing the 21-year-old when she resisted the sexual approach. The pair might have found Guede's sexual drive toward Kercher "exciting" or might have been under the influence of drugs, the document said.
28) This largely aligns with the prosecution's case, which argued that once at the house, Knox and Kercher started arguing and the three brutally attacked and sexually assaulted the Briton, under "the fumes of drugs and possibly alcohol."
29) Knox's defense argued that the American spent the night at Sollecito's house, watching a movie, smoking pot and having sex. Knox said she went home the next morning to find the door to the house open and Kercher dead.
30) The defense has maintained Knox was not the she-devil depicted by the prosecution, but an innocent woman who had just started dating Sollecito and was hardly looking for an extreme sexual experience. Knox said she was friends with Kercher, and that her death shocked her.
31) Knox's behavior in the aftermath of the killing came under scrutiny.
32) Knox gave contradicting statements to police, originally saying she was in the house the night of the murder and accusing a Congolese man -- in whose Perugia bar she worked -- of being the murderer. She said at one point that she had covered her ears to drown out Kercher's screams as she was being murdered. The Congolese man was jailed but later cleared. Knox was convicted of defaming him, though she maintains that police pressure led her to initially accuse an innocent man.
33) For that claim, Knox has recently been indicted on charges she slandered police in separate proceedings. If she is convicted in that trial, which begins in May, any prison sentence Knox receives would be added to her current sentence.
34) The 26-year-old Sollecito, who reportedly won an engineering degree in prison recently, has also maintained his innocence. One if his lawyers, Luca Maori, said he is "hopeful but apprehensive." Guede, the Ivorian, has also denied killing Kercher, though he has admitted being in the house the night of the murder. His sentence to 30 years in prison was cut to 16 years on appeals.
Knox makes emotional address in Italy appeal
(APW_ENG_20101211.0317)
1) Convicted murderer Amanda Knox broke into tears Saturday as she made an emotional address to an appeals court in Italy, saying she was the innocent victim of an "enormous mistake" and that her life had been "broken" by three years in jail.
2) In her address to the court, the 23-year-old American reached out for the first time to the family of Meredith Kercher, the British girl she was convicted of killing and sexually assaulting in 2007 when they were roommates on a student exchange program in Perugia.
3) Knox denied being the "dangerous, diabolical, jealous, uncaring, violent" person described by the prosecution.
4) Last year, Knox was convicted and sentenced to 26 years in prison. Also convicted of the same charges was Raffaele Sollecito, an Italian who is Knox's former boyfriend. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison. Both deny wrongdoing, and have appealed the verdict.
5) The appeals trial formally opened last month but that hearing was immediately adjourned. With Saturday's hearing, the new proceedings got into full swing.
6) "I am innocent. Raffaele is innocent. We did not kill Meredith," Knox said during her 20-minute address, speaking Italian, and her voice breaking. "It doesn't' do justice to Meredith and her loved ones to take our lives from us."
7) Silence fell on the courtroom as Knox started speaking, with her stepfather Chris Mellas and her university friend Madison Paxton in attendance. Paxton, who was crying during her friend's speech, said later she had never been "so proud of anybody in my life."
8) Knox had addressed the court in the previous trial but never for as long or as passionately. She said she regretted not being able to fully speak her mind before, saying that words don't come easily to her and that she has a difficult time standing up for herself.
9) In the United States, the coverage of the case has been largely favorable to the American and critical of the Italian handling of the case. Some raised doubts over the investigation and the collecting of forensic evidence allegedly linking Knox and Sollecito to the crime.
10) "I stand here more scared than ever, not because I am or I have ever been afraid of the truth," she said, "but because the truth has not been recognized."
11) She was in tears as she said she thinks of Kercher as a dear friend she is "grateful and honored" to have met.
12) In the previous trial, Knox had described Kercher as a friend whose death had shocked her. On Saturday, she turned her thoughts to the victim's family.
13) "I'm very sorry Meredith is no longer living," a tearful Knox said. "I too have little sisters and the idea of their suffering, their loss, terrifies me."
14) "What you are going through, and what Meredith was subjected to, is incomprehensible and unacceptable," she said. "You are not alone as you remember her. ... My heart is shattered for all of you."
15) Kercher's family did not attend. Their lawyer, Francesco Maresca, left the courtroom as Knox spoke, saying later that he "didn't want to have to listen to these statements, which came too late, are inappropriate, devoid of any significance and only intended (to impress) the appeals court."
16) The victim's father, John Kercher, recently wrote a piece in Britain's Daily Mail lamenting the fact that "since that act of horrific violence, Knox, it seems, has been accorded the status of a minor celebrity."
17) Kercher wrote that Knox's parents "have never expressed their condolences to our family for our grievous loss."
18) "There has been no letter of sympathy; no word of regret," he wrote. "Instead, I have watched them repeatedly reiterate the mantra of their daughter's innocence."
19) Knox said her initial incarceration was expecially difficult.
20) "I was in prison, my photo was everywhere." She lamented what she said were "insidious, unjust, mean" reports about her private life. While the American press has largely been sympathetic to Knox, reports in Britain and Italy have often described her as a devious, manipulative woman.
21) "I can never get used to this broken life," she said. "I still don't know how to face all this, except than to be myself."
22) Knox has been behind bars since November 2007, a few days after Kercher's body, her throat slit, was found in the apartment she and Knox shared.
23) Knox had discussed the possibilty of addressing the court with her stepfather and friend visiting her in prison, they said.
24) "It's always very stressful for her to speak in court, it's difficult," Mellas told The Associated Press. "But she needed to express her position." Paxton said Knox was "scared" about her address because she's "out of her comfort zone" and doesn't like being in the spotlight.
25) In its December ruling, the court said that on the night of the murder Knox and Sollecito were at the house with a fourth person, Rudy Hermann Guede, an Ivory Coast citizen who has also been convicted of murder in separate proceedings. The court said Knox and Sollecito assisted Guede's sexual desire for Kercher, becoming her brutal assailants together with the Ivorian man and ultimately killing the 21-year-old when she resisted the sexual approach.
26) "How is it possible that I should have jumped at the opportunity to hurt my friend?" Knox asked the court Saturday. "That girl is not me."
27) At the appeals trial, the defense lawyers for Knox and Sollecito are seeking a full review on the forensic evidence, including disputed DNA evidence that was found on a knife allegedly used in the murder and on the clasp of Kercher's bra.
28) The defense maintains the DNA traces were inconclusive, and asserted that they may have been contaminated when they were analyzed. They also want new testimony to be heard.
29) The court is expected to rule on these requests at the next hearing, Dec. 18.
30) The prosecutors, who had sought life sentences, are also appealing the ruling, as they can in Italy.