(Updates previous) (ANSA) – Florence, November 6 – Raffaele Sollecito told a hearing Wednesday that he felt “persecuted” by the Italian justice system in its prosecution of him and his ex-girlfriend Amanda Knox for the 2007 killing of British exchange student Meredith Kercher.
During his first appearance at a retrial of the case, ordered by Italy’s top appeals court after Sollecito and Knox were acquitted in 2011, Sollecito asked the court to “correct the errors” of those who have condemned him.
“I feel towards me a senseless, shocking persecution,” Sollecito told the retrial hearing that opened in Florence in September.
“I would like to make you understand that these charges against me are absurd,” he said.
Sollecito and his American ex-girlfriend were convicted in 2009 of the murder of Kercher, who was found dead on the floor of an apartment she shared with Knox in Perugia in November 2007, but were both acquitted on appeal in 2011.
Earlier this year Italy’s supreme Court of Cassation scrapped the 2011 decision by a Perugia appeals court quashing the 26-year and 25-year sentences that Knox and Sollecito were handed respectively at the original trial, saying contested forensic evidence needed to be looked at again.
Sollecito described Knox as his “first true love,” noting that he was 20 when he first fell for Knox – which he said was older than many when they experience first love, but explained that was because he was “cautious”.
He added that he is from an “honest” family and was raised to tell the truth.
At Wednesday’s hearing, forensic experts are expected to illustrate their findings that a knife thought to be the murder weapon does not have Kercher’s DNA on it, though traces of Knox’s have been found on it. Knox and Sollecito’s lawyers have said this destroys the prosecution’s case.
The knife was retrieved from Sollecito’s kitchen where the former couple had originally said it was used for cooking.
Knox has said she will not attend the retrial.
“”e’s worn out but tranquil,” said Giulia Bongiorno, one of Sollecito’s defence lawyers. A third person, Rudy Guede, was convicted in a fast-track trial and is serving a 16-year sentence for the sexual assault and murder of Kercher, but the Court of Cassation found it unlikely he acted alone.