AMANDA KNOX yesterday startled the Italian court trying her for the murder of Meredith Kercher by saying the English student's death was “yucky, disgusting” and comparing it to crimes in CSI, the popular US television series.

She also accused the Italian police of assaulting her during her interrogation.

Kercher, an exchange student from Coulsdon, Surrey, died on the night of November 1, 2007, at the house she shared with Knox in Perugia, central Italy.

Knox and her Italian ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, 25, are accused of sexually abusing and stabbing Kercher to death after she refused to take part in a perverted sex game.

Rudy Guede, an Ivory Coast drifter, has already been sentenced to 30 years in jail for Kercher’s murder. He has testified that he saw Knox and Sollecito at the scene of the crime.

Yesterday was the second day of Knox’s testimony. The 21-year-old American student appeared self-assured and replied in fluent, steady Italian, gesticulating often during five hours of questioning by prosecutors and lawyers.

When a prosecutor interrupted her on one occasion, she reprimanded him sharply: “Can I continue?”

Francesco Maresca, representing the Kercher family, asked Knox why, as English friends of the victim have testified, she exclaimed in the offices of the Perugia flying squad only hours after the murder that Kercher must have died a slow death. Knox replied: “I heard that she had her throat slit and from what I saw in CSI these things are not quick or pleasant so I said, gosh . . . bleargh . . . this brutality, this death . . . bleargh . . . it really did shock me,” Knox replied.

The jury looked surprised at her language.

“It was a disgusting death. I imagined it was a slow death, a death that was shocking, yucky, disgusting,” Knox said, crossing her hands repeatedly in front of her chest.

Knox said she considered Kercher a friend. Had she suffered for the death of her friend, Maresca asked? “Yes, I was very shocked.” Did she remember Kercher in her daily life? “Yes I remember her; but, in the end I knew her for a month, and first of all I’m trying to get on with my life.”

Giuliano Mignini, the lead prosecutor, pressed Knox on her so-called “confession” to police a few hours after the murder, in which she accused Patrick Lumumba, the owner of the Le Chic bar where she worked, of killing Kercher while Knox was in the kitchen blocking out the sound with her hands over her ears.

Italy’s Supreme Court has thrown out the “confession” because Knox had no lawyer at the time, but she repeated her accusation against Lumumba in a note written in jail. She has since insisted that she spent the evening of Kercher’s death at the home of Sollecito.

She accused an unidentified woman police officer “with long dark chestnut hair” of striking her twice in the back of the neck at the police station.

She also accused the police of suggesting her “confession”and accusation against Lumumba to her. But under questioning by Mignini, she said no police officer had named Lumumba to her.

“It was a crescendo . . . There were lots of police officers who suggested things to me in the sense they said I was going to meet someone [that evening]. They said: ‘Remember, otherwise you will go to jail for 30 years.’”

Police allegedly accused her of knowing who had carried out the murder and of protecting the killer.

A police officer had thrust Knox’s mobile phone in her face, she said. He was showing her her reply to a message from Lumumba which said she did not need to go to work that evening.

As Mignini repeatedly asked Knox to detail who had pressured or beat her and how, her lawyer, Luciano Ghirga, stood up several times to try to block his questions.

“This is impossible!” Mignini exclaimed in frustration.

During one of the heated exchanges, Knox bowed her head and sat immobile for a dozen seconds, apparently prompting Ghirga to demand the hearing be suspended. Knox said she was willing to continue.

Judicial sources said they would consider whether to launch an investigation against Knox for allegedly libelling the police. A police source denied she had been hit or that she had been pressured into accusing Lumumba. Knox is already accused of slandering Lumumba.

Knox’s father, Curt Knox, said after her first day of testimony: “I couldn’t be prouder of my daughter. It went very well. We all had a chance to see who Amanda really is.”

A local paper, Giornale dell’Umbria, described Knox as having “an angel face and the character of a warrior”.

PR drive

The family of Amanda Knox has waged an impressive legal and PR campaign in their battle to free her. From her hometown of Seattle, her divorced parents Curt Knox, a marketing executive, and Edda Mellas, a maths teacher, have hired two lawyers and several consultants in Perugia and Rome to build up her legal defence.

In Seattle, the parents have hired PR consultant David Marriott, a former TV journalist, who has helped organise their appearances on all the main US TV networks. Amanda Knox can also count on the support of the Friends of Amanda association, which posts messages of support and seeks donations on its website.

Amanda Knox’s closest relatives have organised “shifts” over the past months to ensure they see her in jail and in court every week. Curt Knox was in court for his daughter’s testimony; he doesn’t speak Italian but is briefed by lawyers and talks regularly to reporters during breaks in the trial.

Mellas, who is due to testify this week, has been banned from attending the trial before her testimony but she has visited her daughter in prison.

“I’ve never seen a family so dedicated in staying close to a prisoner,” Saulo Scarabattoli, the chaplain of the Capanne prison outside Perugia who sees Amanda Knox every week, said. “Having them close by means a lot to her.”

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