American college student Amanda Knox was found guilty of murdering her British roommate and sentenced to 26 years in prison early today after a year-long trial that gripped Italy and drew intense media attention.
Her co-defendant, former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, was convicted and sentenced to 25 years. The two also were found guilty of sexual assault in the 2007 murder of Meredith Kercher, a 21-year-old student from England.
"No, no," Knox said, bursting into tears and clinging to one of her lawyers as the judge read the verdict just after midnight following 13 hours of deliberations. Minutes later, the 22-year-old Knox, who is from Seattle, and the 25-year-old Sollecito were put in police vans with sirens blaring and driven back to jail.
Prosecutors had sought life imprisonment, Italy's stiffest sentence. Courts can give less severe punishment than what prosecutors demand.
The American's father, Curt Knox, asked if he would fight on for his daughter, replied, with tears in his eyes: "Hell, yes."
"This is just wrong," her stepmother, Cassandra Knox, said, turning around immediately after hearing the verdict.
Her family had insisted she was innocent and a victim of character assassination. The family said later in a statement they would appeal the ruling.
One of Knox's attorneys, Luciano Ghirga, was asked if she was distraught. "Yes, I challenge anyone not to be," he replied.
Silence fell on the packed and tense courtroom as the jurors walked in. Kercher's mother and sister cried at the verdict.
"The sentence is fair and satisfactory for the family," said their lawyer, Francesco Maresca. "It was a heartfelt sentence. There is deep suffering on all sides."
A juror, a woman, also looked like she was crying after the verdict.
A group of local youths who gathered outside the courthouse shouted insults and "assassin" at the Knox family as they walked in to hear the verdict.
Throughout the trial, prosecutors depicted Knox as a promiscuous and manipulative she-devil whose personality clashed with her roommates. They say Knox had grown to hate Kercher.
Prosecutors argued that on the night of the murder, Knox and Sollecito met at the apartment where Kercher and Knox lived. They say a fourth person was there, Rudy Hermann Guede, an Ivory Coast citizen who has been convicted of involvement in the murder and sentenced to 30 years in prison.
Guede, who is appealing his conviction, says he was in the house the night of the murder but did not kill Kercher.
Knox also was convicted of defaming a man she had originally implicated in the case.
After the murder, Knox told investigators she was home and had to cover her ears to block out Kercher's screams.
She accused a Congolese man, Patrick Diya Lumumba, of the killing. Lumumba, who owns a pub in Perugia where Knox worked, was jailed briefly but was later cleared.
Knox said during the trial that police pressure led her to initially accuse an innocent man.
*AP
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Election pledges on migration
CDU: "Now is the time to control the German borders and enforce strict border rejections"
SPD: "Border closures and blanket rejections at internal borders contradict the spirit of a common area of freedom"
NO OTHER LAND
Director: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal
Stars: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham
Rating: 3.5/5
In numbers: PKK’s money network in Europe
Germany: PKK collectors typically bring in $18 million in cash a year – amount has trebled since 2010
Revolutionary tax: Investigators say about $2 million a year raised from ‘tax collection’ around Marseille
Extortion: Gunman convicted in 2023 of demanding $10,000 from Kurdish businessman in Stockholm
Drug trade: PKK income claimed by Turkish anti-drugs force in 2024 to be as high as $500 million a year
Denmark: PKK one of two terrorist groups along with Iranian separatists ASMLA to raise “two-digit million amounts”
Contributions: Hundreds of euros expected from typical Kurdish families and thousands from business owners
TV channel: Kurdish Roj TV accounts frozen and went bankrupt after Denmark fined it more than $1 million over PKK links in 2013
Voices: How A Great Singer Can Change Your Life
Nick Coleman
Jonathan Cape
Related
SPECS
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The National's picks
4.35pm: Tilal Al Khalediah
5.10pm: Continous
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Like a Fading Shadow
Antonio Muñoz Molina
Translated from the Spanish by Camilo A. Ramirez
Tuskar Rock Press (pp. 310)
How to get exposure to gold
Although you can buy gold easily on the Dubai markets, the problem with buying physical bars, coins or jewellery is that you then have storage, security and insurance issues.
A far easier option is to invest in a low-cost exchange traded fund (ETF) that invests in the precious metal instead, for example, ETFS Physical Gold (PHAU) and iShares Physical Gold (SGLN) both track physical gold. The VanEck Vectors Gold Miners ETF invests directly in mining companies.
Alternatively, BlackRock Gold & General seeks to achieve long-term capital growth primarily through an actively managed portfolio of gold mining, commodity and precious-metal related shares. Its largest portfolio holdings include gold miners Newcrest Mining, Barrick Gold Corp, Agnico Eagle Mines and the NewMont Goldcorp.
Brave investors could take on the added risk of buying individual gold mining stocks, many of which have performed wonderfully well lately.
London-listed Centamin is up more than 70 per cent in just three months, although in a sign of its volatility, it is down 5 per cent on two years ago. Trans-Siberian Gold, listed on London's alternative investment market (AIM) for small stocks, has seen its share price almost quadruple from 34p to 124p over the same period, but do not assume this kind of runaway growth can continue for long
However, buying individual equities like these is highly risky, as their share prices can crash just as quickly, which isn't what what you want from a supposedly safe haven.
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