”I respect your courage, I thank the court. The most important thing is that
I do not want to stay in jail unjustifiably for all my life. I want to thank
you for this, your courage.”
Knox and her co-defendant and boyfriend, Italian Raffaele Sollecito, were
arrested on November 6, 2007, a few days after Kercher’s body was found in
the apartment she and Knox shared as exchange students in Perugia.
Sollecito was convicted of the same charges and sentenced to 25 years in
prison.
The two have always denied wrongdoing.
The court gave independent experts carrying out the review until June 30 to
finish collecting all the information and documents on the forensic tests
originally conducted. They are now due to report their findings to the court
on July 25.
The judge also ruled that five serving prison inmates could be called as
witnesses.
They all claim to have evidence on who the real killer was and have insisted
that Knox and Sollecito are both innocent of Miss Kercher’s murder.
One of those being allowed to testify is jailed mobster Luciano Aviello, 42,
who wrote to the court last year and said his brother Antonio carried out
the killing and asked him to hide the true murder weapon.
In a videotaped statement to Knox’s lawyers he said: “When he came to my house
he had a bloodstained jacket on and was carrying a flick knife. He said he
had broken into a house and killed a girl and then he had run away.
”I know [he was involved] because my brother confessed to me that he had
killed Meredith and he asked me to hide a blood-stained knife and set of
keys.”
It also emerged that another serving inmate Tommaso Pace, had written to the
court claiming that a drug dealer had paid €100,000 to have Miss Kercher
murdered over an unpaid debt.
In his letter Pace named the man he said had ordered the murder, paying two
brothers to carry it out, and said that the knife was not the weapon used to
kill Miss Kercher. Judge Hellman ruled that he would delay any decision on
whether to admit Pace as a witness but said the first prisoners would be
heard on 18 June with special arrangements being made for them to testify.
Knox was jailed for 26 years and Sollecito for 25 years at the end of their
trial in December 2009 but there has been growing unease over the conviction
with a groundswell of opinion that they are innocent.
Miss Kercher, from Coulsdon, Surrey, was a Leeds University student in Perugia
as part of her degree course and had only been in Italy for two months when
she was murdered in November 2007.
I do not want to stay in jail unjustifiably for all my life. I want to thank
you for this, your courage.”
Knox and her co-defendant and boyfriend, Italian Raffaele Sollecito, were
arrested on November 6, 2007, a few days after Kercher’s body was found in
the apartment she and Knox shared as exchange students in Perugia.
Sollecito was convicted of the same charges and sentenced to 25 years in
prison.
The two have always denied wrongdoing.
The court gave independent experts carrying out the review until June 30 to
finish collecting all the information and documents on the forensic tests
originally conducted. They are now due to report their findings to the court
on July 25.
The judge also ruled that five serving prison inmates could be called as
witnesses.
They all claim to have evidence on who the real killer was and have insisted
that Knox and Sollecito are both innocent of Miss Kercher’s murder.
One of those being allowed to testify is jailed mobster Luciano Aviello, 42,
who wrote to the court last year and said his brother Antonio carried out
the killing and asked him to hide the true murder weapon.
In a videotaped statement to Knox’s lawyers he said: “When he came to my house
he had a bloodstained jacket on and was carrying a flick knife. He said he
had broken into a house and killed a girl and then he had run away.
”I know [he was involved] because my brother confessed to me that he had
killed Meredith and he asked me to hide a blood-stained knife and set of
keys.”
It also emerged that another serving inmate Tommaso Pace, had written to the
court claiming that a drug dealer had paid €100,000 to have Miss Kercher
murdered over an unpaid debt.
In his letter Pace named the man he said had ordered the murder, paying two
brothers to carry it out, and said that the knife was not the weapon used to
kill Miss Kercher. Judge Hellman ruled that he would delay any decision on
whether to admit Pace as a witness but said the first prisoners would be
heard on 18 June with special arrangements being made for them to testify.
Knox was jailed for 26 years and Sollecito for 25 years at the end of their
trial in December 2009 but there has been growing unease over the conviction
with a groundswell of opinion that they are innocent.
Miss Kercher, from Coulsdon, Surrey, was a Leeds University student in Perugia
as part of her degree course and had only been in Italy for two months when
she was murdered in November 2007.
No comments:
Post a Comment