Italian prosecutors appeal Amanda Knox acquittal

Feb 14, 2012, 16:09 GMT

Rome - Prosecutors in Italy on Tuesday formally lodged an appeal against last year's acquittal of Amanda Knox and her former Italian boyfriend for the 2007 murder of British student Meredith Kercher.

Prosecutors in Perugia, the central Italian town where the murder took place, submitted a 111-page document supporting their case, the ANSA news agency reported.

An appeals court in October ordered that Knox and Raffaele Sollecito be set free after overturning convictions issued to the pair in 2009.

The court found that the charges that Knox and Sollecito had killed Kercher as part of a drug-fuelled game of sex and violence had not been corroborated by proof beyond reasonable doubt.

At the time, Knox and Sollecito were serving prison sentences of 26 and 25 years respectively.

In Italy, both prosecutors and defendants can appeal twice before court rulings become final.

'This is a neverending story. For me it has been a four-year ordeal,' Sollecito said of the appeal.

A third person accused of killing Kercher, Ivory Coast-born Rudy Guede, who had opted for a separate, fast-track trial, was sentenced in 2008 to 30 years in prison.

Guede's sentence was subsequently reduced on appeal to 16 years.

On November 2, 2007, Kercher, 21, was found half-naked, with her throat cut, in the apartment she shared with Knox in Perugia.

The trial in Perugia, a picturesque and normally tranquil central Italian university town, attracted huge international media attention, particularly from the United States and Britain.