Meredith roommate claims innocence
PERUGIA, Italy (CNN) — Amanda Knox, the American student held in connection with the death of Briton Meredith Kercher, has protested her innocence to a court in Perugia, her lawyer says.
Knox’s Italian boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, 23, was also in court Friday for the hearing to decide whether the two can continue to be detained by police.
Investigators looking into the death of British student Kercher say they have clear evidence that ties both suspects to the crime scene.
The two suspects were forbidden any contact with each other and arrived at court in separate police vehicles at around 9 a.m. local time (3 a.m. ET).
Knox, 20, — who shared a villa with Kercher, also 20 — was the first to go before the panel of three judges set to rule on their continued to detention, her lawyer Luciano Ghirga told CNN after the hearing.
He said his client had given a brief statement to the court in which she proclaimed her innocence. Asked how she was feeling he said she was, a bit tense. Watch CNN report on Amanda Knox’s detention
We are happy and hopeful because we have been able to argue our case that the evidence against Amanda is not grave and, therefore, have asked the judge to free her, Ghirga told CNN.
Sollecito’s hearing was expected to go ahead afterward.
Ghirga said a decision in the hearing is expected between 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. local time (11 a.m. and 12 p.m. ET).
CNN obtained a copy of the report that Perugia’s chief prosecutor Giuliano Mignini was to present at Friday’s hearing.
In the document, Mignini says Knox’s DNA matched a blood stain found on the sink in the bathroom next to the victim’s bedroom.
The report also points to a footprint found by forensic police near Kercher’s body that it says belonged to Sollecito.
Kercher, an exchange student at Perugia’s university, was killed late November 1 in the villa where she lived.
Investigators found her the next day, with a stab wound to her neck.
A report issued more than a week ago by an Italian judge suggested she may have been sexually assaulted at knifepoint before she was killed in her bed.
The prosecutor’s report also says that a search of the villa revealed only one fingerprint belonging to the American, which it said suggested that the property had been cleaned to remove evidence of the crime.
It accuses the suspects of staging a theft to cover their tracks.
One other suspect is still being held in connection with the case. Rudy Hermann Guede, 20, was arrested after fleeing to Germany. advertisement
He is the only suspect to have admitted being in the villa on the night of the killing.
Guede claims that an unidentified assailant attacked the British student, his lawyer told CNN.
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