American student Amanda Knox and her Italian former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito did not fake a break-in at the house where British student Meredith Kercher was murdered to mislead police, Sollecito's lawyers told a Perugia court on Friday.
Prosecutors claim Knox, Sollecito and a third man, Rudy Guede, murdered 22-year-old Kercher while forcing her to participate in ''a perverse group sex game'' in November 2007 and then made it look as if someone had broken into the house, smashing a window with a rock from the inside.
But an expert for Sollecito's defence team said Friday that the rock had been thrown from outside through the window of the room belonging to one of the two Italian women with whom Kercher and Knox shared the house.
Former police officer Francesco Pasquali showed the court a video of several reconstructions in which a four-kg rock like that found inside the house is thrown through a window, with similar results to the scene found by police inside the house.
Prosecutors raised objections that the reconstruction did not take into account the presence of window shutters at the house.
Kercher was found semi-naked and with her throat slit on November 2, 2007.
Prosecutors claim Sollecito, 25, and Guede, 21, held Kercher's arms while 21-year-old Knox slashed her throat with a kitchen knife.
Knox and Sollecito are also charged with stealing 300 euros and credit cards from Kercher.
Guede, 21, was sentenced in a separate trial to 30 years for sexual assault and murder. He is appealing the conviction and claims the crime was carried out by Knox and Sollecito alone.
Guede has always admitted to being in the house on the night of the murder but says he was in the bathroom when Kercher was murdered.
Knox and Sollecito deny wrongdoing and their defence teams claim their clients were not in the house and that the crime was committed by a lone intruder.
