A SUSPECT in the murder of the British student Meredith Kercher claims that she invited him to her home and managed to whisper the initials of her presumed killer as she lay dying in her room in the Italian town of Perugia.

The account has been given by Rudy Hermann Guede, 20, from the Ivory Coast, who is being held in Germany awaiting extradition to Italy. One investigator ridiculed his statement.

Guede is said to have made the claims to judges in Germany as well as to a friend with whom he was chatting on the internet before his capture. Unknown to Guede, the friend was with Italian police officers at the time.

Also suspected of sexually abusing and murdering Meredith, 21, are Amanda Knox, 20, her American flatmate, and Raffaele Sollecito, 23, Knox’s Italian boyfriend. Another man, Diya Lumumba, a Congolese bar owner in Perugia, was released last week. He remains a suspect but insists that he had been framed by Knox.

Guede said he had met Meredith a month before her death and that they met again at a Hallowe’en party on the eve of her death. He said he and Meredith, who came from Coulsdon, Surrey, “flirted” at the party. She agreed to meet him at 8pm the following day, November 1.

Guede told the friend that he arrived at the cottage near the centre of Perugia nine minutes late. “We kissed each other a bit, we touched each other a bit, I didn’t rape her,” he said. He then felt a pain in his stomach and went to the bathroom.

Guede said he had his iPod on and did not hear someone enter the cottage. “Then I heard Mez shouting,” he added. When he entered Meredith’s room he saw a man he described as “an Italian” who attacked him and injured his right hand. Guede tried to defend himself with a chair. The man then fled.

He said: “I saw that blood, it terrified me so I took her in my arms. I tried to help her. I dabbed at her wound with a towel, she tried to speak . . . she said two letters, I think A and F . . . I wrote them on the wall.” He then fled in a panic.

An investigator said that Guede’s version was “ridiculous”. There were no traces of such initials on the wall of the bedroom and Meredith’s friends said she did not mention meeting Guede to them.

The evidence against Guede includes a print of his palm on a bloody pillow. DNA tests also showed that he had had sex with Meredith.

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