MOSCOW, January 31 (RAPSI) – An appeals court in Florence, Italy has upheld the guilty verdict against US national Amanda Knox in an in-absentia retrial and sentenced her to 28.5 years of imprisonment for the 2007 murder of a UK student, it was widely reported Friday.

The court has also found her Italian ex-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, guilty and confirmed his previous sentence of 25 years.

In 2009, Knox was sentenced to 26 years for the murder of her roommate, UK exchange student Meredith Kercher. But two years later an appeals court overturned the verdict, accepting the lawyers’ argument that crucial DNA evidence had been contaminated by the police. In 2013, Italy’s Supreme Court ruled that the case be returned for retrial.

Knox is living in the United States, but Sollecito is in Italy, and so the court ruled that his passport be revoked to prevent him from leaving the country. The judge made no request to limit Knox’s movements.

In 2007, Meredith Kercher, aged 21, was found half-naked with her throat cut in the apartment she shared with Knox and two Italian girls in the university town of Perugia. According to investigators, Knox, then 19, and Sollecito raped and killed Meredith because she refused to participate in their drug-fuelled orgy.  Knox and Sollecito claim that the killer is small-time drug dealer Rudy Hermann Guede, who is serving 16 years for this murder.