{"id":43343,"date":"2013-09-30T15:24:35","date_gmt":"2013-09-30T12:24:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/?p=43343"},"modified":"2013-09-30T15:24:35","modified_gmt":"2013-09-30T12:24:35","slug":"meredith-kercher-retrialmurder-suspect-amanda-knox-not-at-court-breaking-news-43343","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/meredith-kercher-retrialmurder-suspect-amanda-knox-not-at-court-breaking-news-43343\/","title":{"rendered":"Meredith Kercher Retrial:Murder suspect Amanda Knox not at court \/ Breaking News"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"knox-kercher-Retrial\"<\/a><\/h1>\n

The retrial of Amanda Knox and Rafaelle Sollecito over the murder of British student Meredith Kercher has begun in Italy, but neither defendant has been in court.<\/h1>\n

American student Amanda Knox, 26, has repeatedly said she will not return to Florence from Seattle, nor is she compelled to do so by law.<\/p>\n

Her former boyfriend Sollecito, a 29-year-old Italian IT graduate, is following proceedings from the Caribbean, where he is on holiday, said his father.<\/p>\n

“I will be informing Raffaele of what happens on the phone after the hearing,” said Francesco Sollecito.<\/p>\n

He added he would be attending every hearing in the appeal trial, which is expected to last until Christmas.<\/p>\n

Sollecito\u2019s father denied suggestions in the media that his son was dipping into a fund he had set up for contributions to his legal expenses.<\/p>\n

“The holiday was provided by a supporter,” he said. “We have raised $25,000 (\u00a315,000) and haven\u2019t touched it.”<\/p>\n

Knox\u2019s decision to not be present in court was criticised by Patrick Lumumba, the former barman who Knox initially accused of taking part in the murder of Miss\u00a0Kercher in Perugia.<\/p>\n

“Knox is afraid – she knows she has responsibility for the death of poor Meredith,” he said in court.<\/p>\n

Lumumba said he had just graduated in International Communications at Perugia\u2019s University for Foreigners, the university attended by Knox during her stay in Perugia.<\/p>\n

As the hearing got under way in Florence, the presiding judge turned down a request from Knox\u2019s lawyers to exclude Lumumba as a civil plaintiff from the trial.<\/p>\n

Francesco Maresca, a lawyer representing the Kercher family, handed the judge a letter from the family, explaining their absence from the session on health grounds.<\/p>\n

he new trial is being held at a modern appeal court building on the fringes of Florence, a stark contrast to Perugia\u2019s medieval court building where hearings have previously been held.<\/p>\n

In 2009, Knox and Sollecito were convicted of killing 21-year-old Ms Kercher two years earlier in the student flat the two women shared in Perugia.<\/p>\n

A third man, Rudy Guede, was convicted over the murder and is serving a 16-year jail term. A court found that Guede had not acted alone.<\/p>\n

The latest trial is expected to re-examine forensic evidence to determine whether Knox and Sollecito helped kill Ms\u00a0Kercher.<\/p>\n

An appeals court acquitted the two suspects in 2011, citing weaknesses in DNA evidence.<\/p>\n

The pair, who at that point had spent four years behind bars, were released, and the American flew back home.<\/p>\n

But in March this year, Italy’s supreme court overturned the acquittal, citing what it said were “shortcomings, contradictions and inconsistencies” in the appeal court’s verdict, and ordered a retrial.<\/p>\n

A new appeal verdict will now be reached, possibly by Christmas, before the case returns to the supreme court.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The retrial of Amanda Knox and Rafaelle Sollecito over the murder of British student Meredith Kercher has begun in Italy, but neither defendant has been in court.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":702,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,80,63,17,1,118,14],"tags":[2973,59241,48644,77166,59240,59239,59238,2974,48645,3124,59243,59242],"class_list":["post-43343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-america","category-breaking-news","category-daily","category-europe","category-general","category-hot","category-world","tag-amanda-knox","tag-amanda-knox-not-court","tag-amanda-knox-retrial","tag-breaking-news","tag-british-student-kercher-murder","tag-italy-usa-uk","tag-meredith-kercehr-retrial","tag-meredith-kercher","tag-meredith-kercher-amanda-knox","tag-meredith-kercher-murder","tag-rafaelle-solecito-kercher-knox","tag-seattle-amanda-knox"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/702"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43343"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43343\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}