Lawyers for Rudy Guede, a 21-year-old Ivory Coast immigrant and a suspect in the murder in Perugia of Meredith Kercher last November, today announced that they would ask a judge to try him separately from Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito, the other two suspects.

Walter Biscotti, one of Mr Guede's lawyers, said that at the hearing next Tuesday they would ask for a fast track trial on the grounds that his innocence could easily be proved. "We see a necessity to keep a distance from the position of the other suspects," Mr Biscotti said.

He said "poisonous allegations" were being spread, a reference to reports that Ms Knox, 21, an American student and Mr Sollecito, 24, her former Italian boyfriend, were planning to argue that Mr Guede had carried out the murder alone. The case against Mr Guede therefore needed to be examined "with tranquillity in a different trial", Mr Biscotti told a news conference in Perugia.

Nicodemo Gentile, another of Mr Guede's lawyers, said that there was no proven link between Mr Guede and the presumed murder weapon, a kitchen knife found at Mr Sollecito's flat which the prosecution claims has the DNA of both Ms Kercher and Ms Knox on it.

Mr Biscotti said that the fast track procedure was normally used in cases where the defence admitted guilt or partial guilt in return for a reduced penalty. "However this is not so in this case. We are aiming at a full acquittal," he said. The strategy holds risks however, since if the judge grants Mr Guede a fast track trial he could in theory be found guilty before any trial of Ms Knox and Mr Sollecito was completed.

Ms Kercher, a Leeds University exchange student from Coulsdon in Surrey, was found semi-naked in her locked bedroom with her throat slashed. The prosecution alleges that Ms Knox, Mr Sollecito and Mr Guede murdered Ms Kercher after a drugs-fuelled "sexual game" went wrong.

At the hearing next week the judge is due to decide whether all three should be sent for trial. Last weekend Francesco Maresca, the Italian lawyer for the Kercher family, said he understood that Mr Guede feared that Ms Knox and Mr Sollecito, her former boyfriend, had made a "pact" to accuse him of being the killer. "Because of the history between the other two, he is afraid he might be framed," Mr Maresca said.

Mr Biscotti confirmed that he believed Ms Knox and Mr Sollecito wanted "to make Rudy the guilty party". Although they were in separate cells they had had contact in prison, he alleged, and Mr Sollecito had sent Ms Knox flowers on her birthday this summer. Joe Tacopina, an American lawyer retained by the Knox family as a consultant, has publicly suggested that the evidence points to Mr Guede as the murderer.

Mr Guede is the only one of the three to admit that he was in the whitewashed hillside cottage which Ms Kercher shared with Ms Knox on the night of the murder. However he claims that he was in the bathroom with stomach pains when the killer entered, and that on emerging he saw a figure resembling Mr Sollecito with a knife in his hand. He then found Ms Kercher's blood covered body and fled, fearing he would be blamed. He escaped to Germany, but was later extradited to Italy and arrested.

Ms Knox and Mr Sollecito maintain that they spent the night together at Mr Sollecito's flat and that Ms Kercher's body was found when they went to the cottage the next day. Last month Giulia Buongiorno, a lawyer and centre Right parliamentary deputy who is assisting Mr Sollecito's defence team, said after visiting the scene of the crime that in her opinion there had been "only one killer".

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