Italy pardons US Air Force officer

ITALY'S president has pardoned a US Air Force colonel convicted in absentia by Italian courts over the CIA-conducted abduction of an Egyptian terror suspect from a Milan street.

President Giorgio Napolitano's office said the head of state granted the pardon "in hopes of giving a solution to a situation considered by the United States to be without precedent because of the aspect of convicting a US military officer of NATO for deeds committed on Italian soil."

Joseph Romano was security chief of northern Italy's Aviano air base where the abducted Egyptian Muslim cleric was taken before being flown out of the country and eventually to Egypt.

He was one of 23 Americans convicted in absentia in the case and whose convictions were upheld last year by Italy's highest criminal court. Three other Americans had been acquitted in a first trial because of diplomatic immunity, but earlier this year, a Milan appeals court convicted the three, who included a former CIA station chief.

The trial was the first in the world involving the CIA's extraordinary rendition program in which terror suspects were abducted and transferred to third countries where torture is permitted. Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, was abducted in 2003 while walking down a street in Milan, where he preached. The cleric was hustled by car off to Aviano, then transferred to a US military base in Germany, before being flown to Egypt, where he said he was tortured. He was eventually released.

Romano's defence said he was never formally notified of charges. Twenty-three Americans were convicted, all in absentia, and Italy's highest criminal court last year upheld the convictions.

That top court decision paved the way for extradition requests by Italian authorities, but so far none have come from Premier Mario Monti's government, which is staying on in a caretaker role following elections earlier this year. Napolitano, as president, has the power to grant pardons, and he issued Romano's pardon a month before his seven-year-term expires.

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Italy court overturns Knox acquittal

This file picture taken on March 12, 2011 shows Amanda Knox in court before the start of a session of her appeal trial in Perugia's courthouse. Picture: AFP Source: AFP

Italy's highest court of appeal has overturned the acquittal of US student Amanda Knox and ordered a retrial over the murder of her British housemate in what prosecutors said was a drug-fuelled sex attack.

Knox and her Italian former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito - originally sentenced to 26 and 25 years in prison for killing and sexually assaulting Meredith Kercher in 2007 - were acquitted on appeal in 2011 after four years in prison.

Both now face a retrial in a Florence court after judges upheld a 2012 prosecution appeal against their acquittals.

"It's not been easy from the start. We have had to climb a mountain, but we draw great strength both from being innocent and from the fact the court's ruling today is not a guilty verdict," Sollecito's lawyer Giulia Bongiorno said.

"The retrial means the court has decided some details need to be reviewed. The battle continues," she said.

Prosecutors addressing the court on Monday had said they were convinced the former lovers were guilty of murdering Kercher.

Calling for the judges to "make sure the final curtain does not drop on this shocking and dire crime," they said the acquittal, which was based mainly on the admissibility of DNA evidence in the case, contained "omissions and many mistakes".

Prosecutor general Luigi Riello had described it as "a rare mix of violation of the law and illogicality and should be overturned," and accused the appeal judge of having "lost of way".

Kercher, 21, was found half-naked with her throat slashed in a pool of blood in her bedroom in the house that she shared with Knox in November 2007.

A third person, Ivory Coast-born drifter Rudy Guede, who like the other two accused has always denied the murder, is the only person still in prison for the crime.

Kercher family lawyer Francesco Maresca punched the air in victory as the court's decision was read out, according to journalists present.

"This decision serves to review the definitive and final truth of Meredith's murder. Guede was not alone, the judges will tell us who was there with him," he said.

The family has long claimed that Knox and Sollecito's acquittals left too many questions unanswered.

They - and investigators - insist that 47 knife wounds on Meredith and the apparent use of two different knives in the attack meant that more than one killer had been involved.

Knox is likely to be tried in absentia. The Seattle student returned home immediately after her release and the United States does not normally extradite its citizens to face legal action.

Prosecutors had alleged that Kercher was killed in a drug-fuelled sex attack involving Knox, Sollecito and Guede.

They had said that it was the American student who delivered the final blows while the other two held the victim down.

The key to the appeal was an independent analysis of two pieces of evidence that had helped convict Knox and Sollecito - a kitchen knife and Kercher's bra clasp.

The appeals judge quashed the convictions of Knox and Sollecito in 2011 largely over the admissibility of DNA evidence.

The review cast serious doubt on the original analysis, with experts and video evidence pointing to sloppy practice among the police at the crime scene and possible contamination of the evidence.

Knox has been repeatedly painted by her accusers as a seductive "she-devil" who had an unhealthy obsession with sex, while her defence has insisted she is simply a naive girl-next-door, a yoga lover whose nickname "Foxy Knoxy" referred to her childhood football skills.

In her first interrogation following the murder, Knox - without a lawyer or an interpreter present - said that she was in the house at the time, and falsely identified the owner of a bar where she worked as a waitress as the killer.

She later said she was with Sollecito at his house all night and blamed her initial comments on exhaustion and police coercion.

Sollecito also changed his story under questioning, but both students later blamed exhaustion and police coercion for their contradictory statements, which were made without lawyers present.

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