Co-defendant found at hotel
FLORENCE, Italy — Police today found Amanda Knox’s ex-boyfriend near Italy’s border with Slovenia and Austria, hours after he and the American student were convicted for a second time in the death of British student Meredith Kercher.
Raffaele Sollecito’s lawyer, Luca Maori, said his client was in the area of Italy’s northeastern border because that’s where his current girlfriend lives, and he went voluntarily to police.
However, the cabinet chief of the Udine police station, Giovanni Belmonte, said police showed up at about 1 a.m. today at a hotel in Venzone where Sollecito and the girlfriend were staying.
They brought him to the Udine police station, took his passport and put a stamp in his Italian identity papers showing he cannot leave the country, as mandated by the appeals court in Florence.
Because the court didn’t order Sollecito detained, he will be freed as soon as the paperwork is completed, Belmonte said. He said Sollecito was calm and came willingly to the station with his girlfriend driving behind.
Asked if police thought he might have planned to flee the country, Belmonte said: “We don’t know his intentions.” But he said police were tipped off to his presence in the hotel and came immediately.
In Italy, adults checking into hotels must hand over ID upon check-in. Hotels are then required to communicate the information to local police.
The court in Florence on Thursday upheld the conviction against Knox and Sollecito, sentencing Knox to 28 ½ years in prison and Sollecito to 25 years for Kercher’s 2007 murder. It did not immediately order Sollecito’s arrest and noted that Knox was “justifiably abroad” after an appeals court in 2011 acquitted the pair and ordered them freed.
The new conviction immediately set the stage for a drawn-out extradition process for Knox, assuming the verdicts are upheld on final appeal, a process that could take another year.
