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Meredith Kercher profile - BBC News Posted: 31 Jan 2014 09:11 AM PST
31 January 2014
Last updated at 10:58 ET
The Kercher family say they may never know what really happened to 21-year-old exchange student Meredith in the Perugia flat she shared with Amanda Knox in 2007. She had chosen the central Italian city over Milan and Rome because she believed it would be safer. "She fought so hard to get out there," her father John has said. "There were quite a few setbacks but she was determined to go and kept persisting and eventually got what she wanted." Known as Mez to her friends, Meredith saw her time in Italy as a dream trip. Her parents said she was excited about learning the language, meeting new friends and immersing herself in a different culture. But three months after leaving the University of Leeds to start her year-long exchange in Italy, she was found dead. The European studies student was embarking on a modern history, political theories and history of cinema course and had moved into a flat she rented with Knox. It was there that Italian police discovered her body; she had been stabbed to death. Her flatmate and Raffaele Sollecito, Knox's then boyfriend, were convicted of the murder in 2009. At the time, prosecutors said the pair had been involved in a sex game with Miss Kercher that had gone wrong. They have since alleged that the murder resulted from a heated argument over cleanliness in the Perugia apartment. Miss Kercher was found in her bedroom, partially covered by a duvet. Her throat had been cut and the bedroom door was locked but the window had been broken. 'Sociable and loving'She was, according to an Italian she was said to have dated, a very different character to her American flatmate. "The two were like chalk and cheese - totally opposite in character," 24-year-old Giacomo Silenzi has said. "Meredith was calm, sweet and shy. Amanda was an extrovert and always showing off." Described as sociable and loving by friends and family, Miss Kercher was often seen in photos smiling broadly. She grew up in the suburb of Coulsdon, in the southern outer reaches of London. Before heading north for university, she was educated at the £10,000-a-year private Old Palace School in nearby Croydon. She was the youngest of four children, with older brothers John and Lyle and sister Stephanie. The family have kept up a campaign to find out what happened in Perugia. "It's very difficult being without my sister," Stephanie said on hearing the news that Knox and Sollecito's guilty verdicts had been reinstated. "There's so many things that happen that I want to tell her about or want to call her about." She says she hopes the latest ruling and the possible extradition of Knox and her former boyfriend means their ordeal is now coming to an end and they can begin to "remember Meredith". Only one person remains in jail for her sister's murder. Rudy Guede, from the Ivory Coast, was sentenced to 16 years in prison in 2008 but that verdict included a ruling that he did not commit the crime alone. And for the Kercher family, there is still no closure. "I think we are still on a journey for the truth and it may be the fact that we don't ever really know what happened that night, which is obviously something we'll have to come to terms with," Stephanie Kercher said. Lawyers for Knox and Sollecito have said both plan to appeal. |
Amnesty won't stop protests in Ukraine - USA TODAY Posted: 31 Jan 2014 08:23 AM PST Ukraine's opposition on Thursday vowed further protests after defiantly rejecting an amnesty bill to free activists and ease the ex-Soviet country's worse crisis since independence. Video provided by AFP Newslook KIEV, Ukraine -- Protesters praised President Viktor Yanukovych's signing into law Friday an amnesty for protesters and a repeal of anti-protest laws but said the move does not change their ultimate goal - Yanukovych's ouster. "People came out onto the streets not for the amnesty, and not out of desire to riot," said Viktor Andrusiv, a protestor in Kiev. "They have demands – the resignation of the Yanukovych, government and the punishing those who are guilty (of violence against the protestors). All this still needs to be negotiated." The new law offers protesters amnesty if they leave the government buildings they have been occupying and stop filling the streets with demonstrations. Protesters currently hold one city hall in Kiev and 10 governor's offices, mostly in the western regions of Ukraine. They also occupy several non-government buildings in the central Kiev. Some political leaders opposed to Yanukovych call the deal "the hostages law," as did protesters. "The amnesty is good for the families of detained protesters but for everyone else it's just a step in the direction of repression," said Olexander Kravchenko, a protester from Kiev. "If people vacate the buildings, the arrests will start. I will be arrested, too, for an insulting banner about prime minister I made for the protest." Since the protests began in late November, hundreds of thousands have taken to the street to demonstrate against Yanukovych's drift away from ties with Europe and toward closer relations with Russia. Ukraine, Europe's second-largest country, declared independence in the 1990s from Russia's previous incarnation, the Communist Soviet Union. Protesters want to align the country with democratic nations in Europe, and not a Russia government under authoritarian President Vladimir Putin. Yanukovych aggravated the forces for stronger ties to Europe with his decision to reject a long-planned political and economic treaty with the European Union and instead accept a bailout and gas delivery package from Russia. The protests that began in November had remained largely peaceful but turned violent last week as protesters clashed with police, leading to at least four deaths, according to police, although others say the toll is higher. Hundreds of protesters have been arrested as well. Even so, the protesters won the resignation of the Prime Minister, Mykola Azarov, earlier this week as well as the repeal of a law restricting protests. But protesters insist they are not done. They say they want not only the resignation of the president, new elections and political reforms. "The amnesty law shows that government doesn't understand what is going on and sees the protest as a small group of people who are upset," says Andrusiv. "But people's positions have not changed – they will make a stand to the end." Meanwhile, police on Friday opened an investigation into the kidnapping of an opposition activist, who said he was held captive for more than a week and tortured in the latest in a string of mysterious attacks on anti-government protesters in the two-month-long political crisis. Dmytro Bulatov, 35, a member of Automaidan, a group of car owners that has taken part in the protests against Yanukovych, vanished Jan. 22. Bulatov was discovered outside Kiev on Thursday. He said his kidnappers beat him severely, drove nails into his hands, sliced off a piece of ear and cut his face. He said he was kept in the dark all the time and could not identify the kidnappers. After more than a week of beatings, they eventually dumped him in a forest. "They crucified me, they nailed down my hands. They cut off my ear, they cut my face. There isn't a spot on my body that hasn't been beaten," Bulatov said on Channel 5 television. "Thank God, I am alive." Bulatov's face and clothes were covered in clotted blood, his hands were swollen and bore the marks of nails. Opposition leader Petro Poroshenko rushed to the hospital where Bulatov was taken Thursday night. "Dmytro asked to pass his greetings to everyone and to say that he has not been broken and will not be broken," a grim-looking Poroshenko told Channel 5. "That he is full of energy and despite the fact that his body has been beaten, Dmytro's spirit is strong." Oleksiy Hrytsenko, Bulatov's friend and fellow activist, said Automaidan members had come under tremendous pressure during the protests with their cars burnt and activists detained, harassed and threatened. Bulatov disappeared one day after Igor Lutsenko, another prominent opposition activist who had also gone missing, was discovered after being taken to the woods and beaten severely by unknown attackers.Lutsenko was kidnapped from a hospital, where he had brought a fellow protester, Yuri Verbitsky, to be treated for an eye injury. Verbitsky was also beaten severely and was later discovered dead. The disappearances prompted an outcry from protesters, who accused the government of intimidating the opposition. European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton issued a statement saying she was "appalled by the obvious signs of prolonged torture and cruel treatment" of Bulatov. She also condemned the death of Verbitsky. "These are but two cases of the continuous deliberate targeting of organizers and participants of peaceful protests," Ashton said. "All such acts are unacceptable and must immediately be stopped." |
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