Top Italian Court To Review Leeds Student Murder Case.

14 February 2012, 18:58 | Updated: 30 March 2016, 13:50

Prosecutors in Italy have asked the highest criminal court to reinstate the murder convictions of Amanda Knox and her former boyfriend for the murder of Leeds University student Meredith Kercher.

They lodged the appeal more than four months after a lower appeal court threw out the convictions against 24 year old Knox and 27 year old Raffaele Sollecito.

Prosecutor Giovanni Galati said he is ``very convinced'' that Sollecito and Knox are responsible for stabbing to death 21-year-old Meredith when she shared an apartment with Knox in the university town of Perugia. Mr Galati said that the appeals sentence must be thrown out, saying it was full of ``fuelled omissions and many errors''.

The appeal, which was expected, marks the third and final stage in the criminal case against Knox and Sollecito.

The two were found guilty in a lower court of killing Miss Kercher in what prosecutors described as a sex-fuelled attack, and sentenced to 26 years and 25 years respectively. An appeals court then said the evidence did not hold up, freeing Knox to return home to the United States after serving four years in prison. Sollecito lives in Italy.

The high court cannot hear new evidence, and will make its decision based on what has been submitted in earlier trials.

A third defendant, Ivory Coast-born drifter Rudy Guede, was convicted in a separate trial of sexually assaulting and stabbing Miss Kercher. His 16-year sentence, reduced in appeal from an initial 30 years, was upheld by Italy's highest court in 2010.