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'I need your help to face this ordeal' - Sollecito

Rosie Scammell/The Local/AFP
Rosie Scammell/The Local/AFP - [email protected]
'I need your help to face this ordeal' - Sollecito
Raffaele Sollecito aims to raise €370,000. Photo: Tiziana Fabi/AFP

Raffaele Sollecito, who will face a retrial for the murder of British student Meredith Kercher next year, is calling on Facebook users to help raise €370,000 to pay his legal bill.

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Sollecito and his former American girlfriend, Amanda Knox  - orginally sentenced to 26 and 25 years for killing  Kercher at her home in Perugia in 2007 - were acquitted on appeal in 2011 after spending four years in jail.
 
However, Italy's highest court ordered a retrial in March.
 
Sollecito created a GoFundMe website earlier today, with a target of raising €370,000 for the retrial, which is due to take place in Florence next year. 
 
“I don’t have resources anymore to fight this injustice,” he says on the page. “I badly need to be able to hire experts, when needed, or pay my attorney's fees, documents fees, and so on when the new appeal will start." 
 
He added: “I hope not to bother you, but I need your help to face this ordeal. I don’t want to be forced to give up just for financial reasons.”
 
The page has so far attracted individual donations of up to €193.
 
Italy’s supreme court on Tuesday issued a 74-page document detailing the numerous inconsistencies it found in the acquittal. Knox's lawyer, Luciano Ghirga, said he was "very surprised" by the report, which means DNA evidence will need to be re-examined from scratch.
 
A third person, Ivory Coast-born Rudy Guede, remains in prison having had his 30-year sentence for Kercher’s murder reduced to 16 years on appeal.

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