Meredith Kercher killer put under restraining order
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A preliminary investigations judge in Viterbo issued a restraining order against Rudy Guede, the 36-year-old Ivorian national convicted of murdering British exchange student Meredith Kercher in Perugia in 2007, for allegedly abusing his former girlfriend, aged 20.
Investigators are reportedly probing the crimes of personal injury, ill-treatment and violence.
Prosecutors had reportedly asked for Guede, who was released from jail in November 2021 after serving 13 years of a 16-year-term for the November 1, 2007 murder of the Leeds University student in the Perugia flat she shared with American Amanda Knox, to be placed under house arrest.
However, the judge ruled that a ban on approaching within 500 metres of the victim and an electronic bracelet was sufficient.
Guede is the only person definitively convicted of killing Kercher in the Umbrian capital after the Italian supreme court acquitted two other former suspects, Knox and her Italian ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, overturning an earlier conviction.
The Ivorian, who has maintained his innocence, made an unsuccessful bid for his case to be reviewed after Knox and Sollecito were cleared.
Guede’s DNA was found inside Kercher and all over the murder scene.
Knox and Sollecito’s initial conviction was based on DNA evidence that was later ruled unsafe, leading to their final acquittal.
Guede said he went into a “state of shock” after finding Kercher dead following a visit to the bathroom after meeting her on the night she was killed.
He fled the country and was arrested in Germany a few days after the murder.
