The lawyers of a suspect in the murder of British student Meredith Kercher said Wednesday they were considering legal action after a United States newspaper published comments claiming their client was guilty.
The legal team of 21-year-old Ivory Coast national Rudy Guede said it had contacted a Seattle law firm following the publication of an interview in the Seattle Times with the parents of another suspect in the case, 20-year-old American Amanda Knox.
Guede's lawyers said they took issue with comments in the article claiming that Guede had a criminal past and was solely responsible for the university exchange student's death in Perugia last year.
''Rudy has never been tried and has never been found guilty. He did not kill Meredith and we will prove it to the judges,'' said Valter Biscotti.
Knox, Guede and Knox's 24-year-old Italian boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito have been in custody for the murder since November when Kercher, 22, was found with her throat slit in the house she shared with Knox and two other girls.
All three suspects deny wrongdoing, although Guede admits to being in the house on the night of the murder.
According to leaked testimony, Guede said he had begun to have sex with Kercher in her bedroom but that they had stopped when Guede realised he did not have a condom.
He claimed he then went to the bathroom and that Kercher was killed while he was out of the room.
He said he tussled with the attacker, who was white and had a knife in his hand, before fleeing the crime scene.
Although he initially claimed he did not get a good look at the man's face, he later identified the attacker as Sollecito and claimed he had heard Knox speak from the doorway of the house.
Biscotti said that evidence implicating Knox and Sollecito in the murder was ''extremely strong'', contrary to claims of their innocence by Knox's parents published in the Seattle Times.
But Sollecito's lawyer, Luca Maori, described the comments as ''the last desperate attempt to take Rudy out of the firing line and put suspicion on others''.
Knox's lawyers said they had no comment.
Italian police closed their investigation into the case in June and a preliminary hearing on September 16 will decide whether there is sufficient evidence for the three suspects to stand trial.
