Sharjah24 – AFP: An Italian court convicted two young Americans Wednesday for the murder of a police officer while they were on a summer holiday in Rome, with both handed life sentences.
Finnegan Lee Elder, 21, had admitted stabbing Mario Cerciello Rega during a late-night encounter in July 2019, while out with his friend Gabriel Natale-Hjorth, 20.
Prosecutors claimed it was a brutal, unprovoked attack in which Elder, then 19, stabbed Cerciello 11 times with a seven-inch camping knife.
The Americans had claimed self-defence, saying they were jumped from behind by men they thought were thugs following an earlier drug deal gone wrong.
Reading out the verdict, Judge Marina Finiti declared the Americans "guilty of the offences ascribed to them jointly" and sentenced them both to "life imprisonment with solitary confinement for a period of two months, in addition to payment of the costs of the trial".
Both were remanded in custody.
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