Italy's highest appeals court disclosed on Monday that a suspect in the murder of British student Meredith Kercher must remain in custody because of his ''evident and indisputable'' participation in the crime.
The Cassation court decided on April 1 to keep 21-year-old Ivory Coast national Rudy Hermann Guede behind bars as police continue their investigation into the murder of the university exchange student in Perugia last November.
Under Italian law, a suspect can be kept in jail for up to a year.
Explaining its ruling on Guede, the court said the suspect himself admitted to being present in Kercher's house ''before, during and after the murder'' and to having ''incomplete'' sexual relations with the victim shortly before her death.
The court ruled that at this stage of the investigation it was not necessary to establish whether Guede participated as ''author or co-author'' of the crime, but that there was satisfactory evidence to suggest he had taken part ''consciously and voluntarily in the act of murder''.
Judges also described as ''indisputably false'' Guede's story that a stranger entered the house and killed Kercher while he was in the bathroom.
Guede is one of three suspects being held in custody over the murder.
In April the Cassation court ruled that Kercher's 20-year-old American housemate Amanda Marie Knox and her 24-year-old Italian boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito must also remain in jail.
The judges cited the ''negative personalities'' of the pair in its decision as well as a ''real and concrete danger'' that they might flee the country or go into hiding if they were released.
Sollecito's early admission that he ''had told a load of rubbish'' to investigators also went against him, the court said.
Kercher, 22, was found with her throat slashed on November 2 in the house she shared in Perugia with Knox and two other girls.
Guede, as opposed to Knox and Sollecito, admits to being at the scene of the crime but denies any involvement.
He claims to have seen Meredith's murderer, with whom he tussled briefly, after coming out of the bathroom and that he heard someone else talking from the doorway of the house.
According to leaked testimony, last month Guede told the public prosecutor that the other people in the house were Sollecito and Knox, despite earlier claims that he was not able to identify the pair.
In January investigators said they were confident they would wrap up the case by the end of the summer.
Although they admit they remain in the dark about the motive, they claim the forensic evidence they have gathered so far against the three suspects is solid.
This evidence is said to include Sollecito's DNA on the victim's bra.
Guede's DNA has been found in the toilet at the murder scene, in a vaginal swab of the victim, on her purse and on the cuff of her tracksuit.
He also left a bloody fingerprint on Kercher's pillow.
DNA belonging to both Knox and Kercher were also identified in a drop of blood found in the victim's bathroom.
Other forensic evidence includes a large kitchen knife found in Sollecito's kitchen which had the victim's DNA on the blade and Knox's DNA on the handle.
