Lawyers for an Ivory Coast drifter yesterday accused Amanda Knox and her boyfriend of framing him for the murder of Meredith Kercher, the Leeds university exchange student, in Italy last year.

Rudy Guede, 21, had had consensual sex with Kercher and had not raped her, Walter Biscotti, his lawyer, insisted in a closed hearing in court.

Kercher, 21, was found last November with her throat slit in her bedroom in the Perugia home she rented with Knox.

“They are trying to pin this on Rudy,” claimed Biscotti during a break in yesterday’s hearing. “Rudy is easy to attack. We expected this and it’s what’s happening.

Just being at the scene of a crime doesn’t make you guilty.”

Guede was in the house but was listening to his iPod in the bathroom when Kercher was killed in the bedroom, claimed his lawyer, repeating the defence the Ivorian has maintained since he was arrested last November.

This week an Italian judge will rule on whether Knox, a 21-year-old American student, and her Italian boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, 24, will stand trial for the murder. Guede opted for a fast-track trial and a verdict is expected on Tuesday.

Prosecutors claim the three defendants murdered Kercher during an erotic game and that it was Knox, known to her friends as “Foxy Knoxy”, who cut Kercher’s throat.

Knox’s lawyers presented their case last week, claiming that a burglar killed Kercher when she returned home and found a thief in the house. Sollecito’s lawyers took the same line. They did not name Guede as the possible burglar, although they suggested as much.

“It’s not our job to accuse; we defend, and that’s what we did,” said Luca Maori, Sollecito’s lawyer. “If in the course of our case we point out facts and people connected to those facts then that has to be taken into consideration.”

Guede, who grew up in Italy and is accused of raping Kercher as well as having a role in the murder, would get a life sentence if found guilty. Under Italian law he would not serve more than 30 years.

Luciano Ghirga, Knox’s lawyer, said: “There is no battle between the defence teams,” though his chuckle suggested he might not have been entirely sincere.

“We argued today that there wasn’t a rape,” and that sex was consensual between Guede and Kercher, said Biscotti. “We demonstrated that all the elements the prosecutors tried to suggest were linked to Rudy as part of this crime don’t exist. We’re convinced that Sollecito and Amanda returned to the house and that they probably then cleaned up the crime scene.”

Guede fled to Germany after the killing of Kercher, who was found half-naked in her room. He was tracked down three weeks later by Italian police in Koblenz, Germany. The Ivorian told the judge and prosecutors that he fled from Italy because he was scared.

The prosecution will present its closing arguments tomorrow. If Knox and Sollecito are put on trial the case is unlikely to begin before next month.

The Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera last week published the transcripts of conversations and letters between Knox and her family and friends. In one she says she wants to get two tattoos, a small one on her shoulder and one on her wrist with a line from a song by Jovanotti, an Italian singer, which says, “I know that I’m not alone even when I am alone.”

In other correspondence Knox says: “Once my cellmate was depressed so I hugged her and she asked if I wanted to have sex, but I’m not a lesbian.” Only once does she refer to Kercher, saying, “her family has suffered more than anybody else”.

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