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'Sex motive' for Briton's death
08/11/2007 17:49 - (SA)
Rome - An Italian judge was to decide on Thursday whether three suspects in the gruesome murder of a British exchange student in central Perugia should remain in custody to face charges in the case.
Victim Meredith Kercher's American flatmate Amanda Marie Knox, Knox's Italian boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito and a barman from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Lumumba Diya, were arrested on Tuesday.
Police said Kercher's assailants "apparently had a sexual motive" though initial autopsy results showed the Briton from south London, who was found in her Perugia bedroom with her throat slit last Friday, had not been raped.
The hearing is set for 11:00 (10:00 GMT).
The case has prompted lurid headlines in the Italian and British press as well as in Knox's hometown, Seattle, Washington, with reports that 20-year-old Knox, describing herself as confused, has changed her story several times.
Cellphone records have helped investigators sort out discrepancies among the three suspects' accounts, media reports say.
'We're terrified'
Sollecito's lawyer Tiziano Tedeschi lashed out at the press for carrying out what he called "a media lynching" in the case.
"I'm a fighter going into the ring with my hands tied, thanks to the press. We're terrified. ... I've never seen such a forceful media lynching," he told the ANSA news agency, describing Sollecito, a 24-year-old engineering student from the southern city of Bari, as a model son.
Kercher shared an apartment with Knox in Perugia, the main city in Italy's central Umbria region.
Perugia police commissioner Arturo De Felice said her assailants apparently tried to "overcome (her) sexually" and killed her when she resisted.
Reports late on Wednesday said investigators had determined that only a man could have inflicted the fatal wound to Kercher's neck.
The presumed murder weapon has been found, a flick knife with a blade 8.5cm long, and is being analysed, reports said.
Kercher was in her third year of a European studies degree and was in Italy with the pan-European Erasmus exchange programme.
Knox is studying Italian at a university for foreigners in Perugia, police said.
Diya, 38, immigrated to Italy in 1988, police said.
Roses and a note
De Felice said Knox had met Diya at the bar where he works, but it was unclear whether he knew Kercher.
Knox's mother arrived in Perugia, which is twinned with Seattle, on Tuesday, declining to talk to reporters.
Meanwhile Kercher's parents and sister Stephanie left Perugia early on Wednesday after meeting with the prosecutor in the case and leaving a note and a red rose on the steps of Perugia's cathedral where people have lit candles at a makeshift shrine to Meredith Kercher.
It was not known when Kercher's remains would be repatriated.
- AFP
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