By Tom Kington, in Florence
Raffaele Sollecito has denied murdering Meredith Kercher and begged for his life back, in a dramatic court room appeal to an Italian jury.
Speaking six years after the British student was killed in the Italian city of Perugia, 29-year-old Sollecito made the emotional plea to the appeal trial in Florence.
He appealed to the jury "as an Italian, like you, to have a life".
"Because I don't have a real life," he said, before thanking the jury while appearing close to tears.
During his 15-minute speech, which gripped the jurors after a morning of complex DNA results that often left them looking lost, Sollecito described his brief romance with co-defendant Amanda Knox as a "little fairytale".
He said the relationship was shattered when the pair were accused of fatally stabbing Ms Kercher in the house she shared with Knox, pushing the defendants into a "nightmare beyond imagination".
Meredith Kercher was found with stab wounds to the neck in 2007 "I have been described as a ruthless killer but I am nothing of the sort," he said, during a softly spoken and occasionally rambling speech.
The trial is the latest in a drawn out legal process that saw Knox, 26, and Sollecito convicted and jailed in Perugia in 2009, before being released after four years when they were cleared on appeal in 2011, only for that verdict to be overturned by Italy's supreme court this year.
While Knox has refused to travel from her home in Seattle to appear in court for the new appeal, Sollecito returned from a holiday in the Dominican Republic to appear at the fresh appeal, flanked by his father.
Sollecito said he was "proud" to come from a "good Italian family" which had taught him strong values and had never had legal problems.
"I have always been honest, but I have been called an assassin," he said.
He claimed he had been a reserved student at Perugia, had not been an "obsessive partier" and did not drink.
In an apparent reference to the now infamous photos of him kissing Knox at the crime scene, he apologised, telling the jury "I didn't take the situation seriously at the start".
From being one week away from obtaining his degree, he was plunged into six months in isolation followed by a spell in a maximum security jail, he said, adding: "I don't recommend it to anyone in the world. All my life was cancelled."
Sollecito apologised over this picture of he and Knox and kissing Speaking without notes, Sollecito condemned the "hallucinatory persecution" he faced, complaining that police had believed a footprint found at the house was his before changing their mind eight months later.
Sollecito said he had never known Rudy Guede, the local drifter who was convicted for his role in the murder.
"I would not have had a minimal interest in committing this atrocious act against a 20-year-old," he said.
Sollecito has faced suspicions that he was preparing to flee Italy after he took a holiday in the Dominican Republic, which does not have an extradition treaty with Italy.
But his father said his decision to fly in for the hearing showed he had no plan to escape Italian justice.
Sollecito complained that he had been hounded by photographers.
"I need to defend myself in the media for the most banal thing," he said.
"I have tried to stay out of the limelight. And today I am here before you to get to know you and tell you the truth of this matter."
Sollecito's speech followed an explanation by two Italian police officers of the results of a test on a DNA trace carried out on a knife found at his flat, which prosecutors have argued is the murder weapon.
Amanda Knox has refused to appear at the appeal The officers said the results allowed the police to "support, in an extremely significant manner, the hypothesis that genetic material of Amanda Marie Knox is present" in the trace.
An earlier police report decided that a separate trace could contain Ms Kercher's DNA, which was used to suggest that the knife was the murder weapon.
But that test was challenged as unreliable by a second analysis carried out during the first appeal.
The latest result on the separate trace has been seized by lawyers representing Knox and Sollecito as proof that the knife was used by Knox and Knox only in Sollecito's kitchen.
Carlo Dalla Vedova, a lawyer representing Knox, said: "This is just a kitchen knife."
But Francesco Maresca, a lawyer representing the Kercher family, said he was sticking by the initial report that found a trace of Ms Kercher's DNA on the blade.
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