Italian court upholds 16-year jail term for Kercher’s murder

ITALY’S highest criminal court yesterday upheld the conviction and 16-year prison sentence of a young man from the Ivory Coast for the 2007 murder of a British student.

Meredith Kercher’s body, stabbed in the neck and lying in a pool of blood, was found in the room of a flat she shared with American student Amanda Knox of Seattle, who was convicted in a separate trial of the murder and sentenced to 26 years.

Knox’s appeal trial recently began in Perugia, a town in Umbria famed for its university with a large population of foreign students. Co-defendant in that appeal is her former boyfriend, Italian Raffaele Sollecito, who was sentenced to 25 years in prison for the murder.