Meredith Kercher killer Rudy Guede released from prison to finish 16-year sentence doing community service

Rudy Guede has been released early to serve the remainder of his sentence via community service

Credit: TIZIANA FABI /AFP

The only person convicted of the murder of British student Meredith Kercher in Perugia, Italy, will be allowed to finish his sentence doing community service in the city where he has been serving time for 13 years.

Rudy Guede, 33, was sentenced in a 2008 fast-track trial to 30 years in prison (later reduced to 16 on appeal) for the killing of 21-year-old student Meredith Kercher of Coulsdon, Surrey. 

Mr Guede admitted he was present and fled the scene but always denied killing the young Briton, found stabbed to death in the flat she shared with two others in Perugia, Italy, in November 2007.   

One flatmate, American student Amanda Knox, 33, and her then boyfriend, Italian Raffaele Sollecito, now 36, were also initially convicted of murder in a separate high-profile trial, but were acquitted in 2011, after four years behind bars. 

They were convicted again in 2014 by a Florence appeals court, but the decision was overturned in 2015 by Italy’s highest court, which acquitted them definitively for lack of evidence and errors in the investigation.  

Rudy Guede was jailed for the murder of Meredith Kercher in 2008

Credit: ALESSANDRO BIANCHI
/Reuters

One felony calumny conviction was upheld against Ms. Knox for falsely accusing Congolese pub owner Patrick Lumumba of being at the crime scene. The court ordered her to pay damages to Mr. Lumumba, who spent two weeks in jail, but his attorney told the Telegraph he "hasn’t seen a cent".

Mr Guede, who is also African, having moved to Perugia from the Ivory Coast as a child with his father, was given partial prison release in 2017 to pursue a master’s degree in historical sciences and work in the library of a criminology centre. 

But after the library closed due to the Covid-19 pandemic, he began working for the Catholic charity, Caritas, in the food kitchen and disinfecting the chapel between services. 

On Friday, a probation court ruled he could continue the community service for the remainder of his term, which ends in March 2022. 

His lawyer, Fabrizio Ballarini called the decision an important milestone for Mr Guede, who rents an apartment and is  "calm and socially well integrated" after years of good conduct.