ROME, Jan. 31 (Xinhua) - The family of murdered British student Meredith Kercher held a press conference in Florence on Friday, a day after an Italian appeal court upheld guilty verdicts for American citizen Amanda Knox and her Italian former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito.
Knox and Sollecito were sentenced to 28 years and six months and to 25 years in jail, respectively, for the murder of Meredith Kercher in 2007.
"We are still on a journey to the truth," Meredith's sister Stephanie told journalist. "It may be the fact that we will never really know what happened that night, which is obviously something that we will have to come to terms with," she said.
Stephanie Kercher added that they hope to come nearer to the end of the case, in order to "start remembering Meredith for who she was".
Meredith's brother, Lyle, said the Unites States should agree to extradite Amanda Knox.
"If she (Amanda) has been found guilty she should be extradited. America will set a difficult precedent, if they don't stand by the rules they expect others to abide by," he pointed out.
Amanda Knox, an American student aged 26, declared she would never come back to Italy. After the news of her conviction reached her in the native city of Seattle, she told American media that she would only be extradited from the United States "kicking and screaming". She also said she was "frightened and saddened by an unjust verdict".
Meanwhile, Raffaele Sollecito was stopped in northern Italy in the early hours of Friday, police said.
He was in a hotel between the cities of Udine and Tarvisio near the border between Austria and Slovenia. Police confiscated his passport, since Sollecito has been put under travel ban. He will still be free to move within the country until the sentence is confirmed.
In Italy, sentences become 'definitive' only after going through all three levels of the justice system, which implies both sides are allowed to appeal to the Supreme Court. Both Knox's and Sollecito's lawyers confirmed they will appeal.
Italy can already ask for Amanda Knox to be extradited, but it will likely wait until the Supreme Court put the final word to the case, according to experts.
Meredith Kercher, a twenty-one-year old exchange student from England, was killed in the city of Perugia on November 2007. She was found stabbed to death and with her throat slit, in the flat she shared with Amanda Knox and two other students.
Knox and Sollecito, partners at the time, were found guilty of the murder in a first grade trial in 2009, but they were acquitted on appeal in 2011 and freed, after four years in prison.
The Supreme Court, however, overturned their acquittals last year, accepting the prosecutor's argument that relevant DNA evidence had been disregarded. A retrial was ordered, and started on September 2013 in Florence.
Related:
Amanda Knox found guilty in Briton murder trial
ROME, Jan. 30 (Xinhua) -- An Italian court on Thursday upheld the guilty verdict against American citizen Amanda Knox and her Italian ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito on Thursday, in a new appeal over the murder of British student Meredith Kercher in 2007.
They were sentenced to 28 years and six months and to 25 years in jail, respectively. Full story
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