The American student suspected of taking part in the murder in Italy last year of Meredith Kercher was face to face yesterday with Raffaele Sollecito, her fellow suspect, for the first time since their arrest ten months ago.

Amanda Knox, 21, appeared tense as she entered a courtroom in Perugia for the second in a series of pre-trial hearings. Dressed in a blue V-necked sweater and jeans, she was marched into court by blue-bereted prison guards and flinched as she passed photographers and reporters, one of whom asked: “Are you innocent, Amanda?”

At the first hearing, a week ago, she had appeared serene and demure in an embroidered white blouse. The Italian media portrayed this as a silent statement of her innocence and an attempt to counteract the widespread image of her as an “angel-faced killer”.

Rudy Guede, the third suspect, an Ivory Coast-born immigrant, arrived at court shortly before Ms Knox, wearing a black T-shirt and with his head almost shaven. Her former boyfriend Mr Sollecito, who had failed to appear at the first pre-trial hearing, apparently because he was unwell, wore a white cotton jacket and jeans.

New witness 'saw Meredith suspects together'

Amanda Knox, Raffaele Sollecito and Rudy Guede were see at the house in Perugia where the American student died

Multimedia

• Murder in Perugia

BACKGROUND

• Meredith Kercher: Q&A

• New DNA not from Meredith suspects

• Timings crucial to Kercher murder investigation

Related Links

• CCTV footage of 'Kercher' emerges

• Meredith Kercher: Q&A

Court sources said that Mr Sollecito, 24, exchanged glances with Ms Knox when he entered the courtroom. To ensure that the three suspects did not communicate, they were placed in different rows.

Lawyers for all three suspects challenged the testimony of Hekuran Kokomani, an Albanian who claims to have seen them together on the night of the murder. They claim that his account is confused and unreliable.

Mr Kokomani has told police that it was raining when he saw the three, but video footage taken from a closed-circuit television camera at the car park above the cottage where the murder took place shows that there was no rain that evening.

At the hearing Mr Kokomani repeated to the judge evidence he gave to police in January in which he said that he had parked his VW Golf near dustbins outside the hillside cottage that Ms Knox and the British student Ms Kercher shared with two female Italian students. He had seen a woman with a knife in her hand. When she saw Mr Kokomani she had threatened him with the knife, he claimed.

The hearing also heard evidence from character witnesses for Mr Guede.

Ms Knox and Mr Sollecito had been lovers for two weeks when Ms Kercher, a 21-year-old Leeds University student who was on a course in Perugia, was found with her throat slashed last November.

In behaviour described by the prosecution as bizarre, the pair were photographed embracing outside the cottage as police began their investigations inside, and were later seen buying lingerie and discussing a forthcoming night of “wild sex”.

Mr Guede, who has been granted a separate trial by the pre-trial judge, Paolo Micheli, has said he fears that Ms Knox and Mr Sollecito have colluded to frame him as the sole killer.

Mr Guede, 21, admits having been at the cottage on the night of the murder, but denies committing the crime, even though he subsequently fled to Germany, where he was arrested.

He claims that he was in the bathroom with stomach pains when Ms Kercher was murdered, and emerged to see a figure “resembling” Mr Sollecito holding a knife. He also says that he heard a woman’s voice at the door, later identifying the voice as that of Ms Knox.

The prosecution alleges that all three suspects took part in a sexual assault on Ms Kercher that ended with the British student’s throat being cut.

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