Sollecito reiterates innocence in Meredith murder case

Ex-girlfriend Knox provides alibi

(ANSA) - Rome, July 1 - Raffaele Sollecito, the Italian convicted together with American former student Amanda Knox of the 2007 murder of British Erasmus student Meredith Kircher in Perugia, on Tuesday reiterated his innocence, saying Knox herself provided his alibi. "It's Amanda's memories that exonerate me, she herself gives me an alibi when she says I have nothing to do with what the judges consider to be the truth," said Sollecito on filing an appeal to Italy's Supreme Court of Cassation against his conviction earlier this year. Sollecito also said he remained convinced of the innocence of Knox, his girlfriend at the time of the murder.

However, he added that her version of events as reported in the sentence issued by the Florence appeals court in January "contained a few anomalies". Knox and Sollecito were initially convicted of the murder at the original trial in Perugia in 2009 and have served a total of four years in prison including pre-trial custody. That conviction was overturned on appeal two years later, but in 2013 Italy's supreme court ordered a repeat of the appeals trial, saying evidence linking Knox and Sollecito to the murder scene had not been properly considered. In January, the Florence court repeated the appeals-level trial that sentenced Knox to 28 and a half years in prison and Sollecito to 25 years.

The Florence court said in its written explanation of the sentence that it heard "reliable" evidence placing both defendants in the Perugia flat where Kercher was killed, in "the immediate moments after the murder". With them was a third person convicted of the killing in a separate fast-track proceeding, Rudy Guede, a drifter from the Ivory Coast. The Florence court concluded that the homicide was sparked by an argument between Kercher and Knox, possibly over the cleanliness of the apartment, and not by a drug-fueled sex game gone awry, as prosecutors said at the original trial. Knox and Sollecito both said they would appeal against the ruling to Italy's highest court.