Kercher family asks for damages

| Tue, 10/21/2008 - 03:32

Lawyers representing the family of murdered British student Meredith Kercher on Monday asked for 25 million euros in damages at the trial of her three alleged attackers in Perugia.

The family lawyers asked for five million euros in compensation each for Kercher's parents, two brothers and sister.

''Meredith Kercher was a young woman with a desire to live, who came to Perugia to study and to meet new people, happy with a life that was, however, taken from her,'' said lawyers Francesca Maresca and Serena Perna.

University exchange student Kercher, 22, was found semi-naked with her throat cut on November 2 at the house she shared in Perugia with three other female students.

The family's lawyers said a reconstruction of events leading up to Kercher's death presented by public prosecutors on Saturday was ''absolutely credible''.

Public prosecutor Giuliano Mignini told the court that Kercher was killed when her American flatmate Amanda Knox, Knox's Italian boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito and Ivory Coast national Rudy Guede tried to force her to participate in ''a perverse group sex game''.

In Mignini's reconstruction of events, Sollecito and Guede held Kercher's arms while Knox slashed her throat with a kitchen knife.

The public prosecutor said Guede, 21, had also tried to rape Kercher.

Mignini asked judges for a life sentence for Guede, who opted for a fast-track trial so that he would not be tried alongside Knox, 21, and Sollecito, 24.

Although fast-track trials usually carry reduced sentences, in Guede's case prosecutors have asked that he should serve the full life sentence but without the requirement that he do so in isolation.

Judges are expected to return a verdict on Guede on October 27 or 28, when they will also rule on whether there is sufficient evidence to proceed with the trial of Knox and Sollecito, after hearing from the defence lawyers of the three suspects.

Guede, Knox and Sollecito all deny the accusations, although Guede admits to being present in the house when Kercher was killed. Knox and Sollecito say they were at Sollecito's house the night of the murder.

On Monday lawyers for a former suspect, Democratic Republic of Congo national Diya 'Patrick' Lumumba, asked judges to proceed with a secondary trial for defamation against Knox.

Lumumba, 38, was arrested in November on testimony by the American but released shortly afterwards when no evidence was found to implicate him. Knox later retracted her statements.

Lumumba's lawyers said Monday their client had been ''ruined as a man, husband and father'' as a result of his involvement in the case.

''If you make a mistake you have to pay,'' Lumumba added.

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