(see previous story on site).

(ANSA) - Perugia, March 4 - The murder of Meredith Kercher in Perugia in November 2007 was a violent sex crime, an Italian judge said Thursday in his detailed ruling on the December guilty verdict for Amanda Knox and her Italian ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito.

The murder, said Judge Giancarlo Massei in a written ruling of more than 400 pages in support of the 25-year and 26-year sentences, was "erotic, violent and sexual" in motive.

A second man sentenced to 16 years in a separate, appeals trial, Ivory Coast native Rudy Guede, tried to have sex with 21-year-old Kercher before she was killed on the night of November 1, the judge said.

Knox, now 22, and Sollecito, now 25, decided to help Guede, now 23, "subject Meredith to sex abuse" but the victim put up "fierce resistance".

The assailants gripped the Leeds University exchange student so tightly around the throat they left bruises that led investigators to initially think the cause of death might have been suffocation, the judge said.

But this was in fact only a part of a "crescendo of violence" aimed at getting Kercher to give in to the attempted rape, he said.

Traces of Guede's Y chromosome were taken by a vaginal swab during Kercher's autopsy, the judge said.

A small wound found on Kercher's neck was caused by a knife "Sollecito always had with him" and was made after he cut her bra, the verdict said.

The fatal wound was inflicted by Knox with a kitchen knife later found in Sollecito's apartment, Judge Massei said.

Massei said the assailants were under the influence of drugs on the night of the attack, while Kercher had been drinking.

Prosecutor Giuliano Mignini hailed the ruling as "upholding almost entirely the prosecution case" and "vindicating the work of the police".

DEFENCE VOWS TO REBUT SENTENCE 'POINT BY POINT'.

Sollecito's lawyer Luca Maori said his team intended to "rebut point by point" the verdict.

"It is a sentence which we still have to carefully assess but which we wholly disagree with," Maori said.

There was no immediate response from Knox's defence team.

The case will be examined at the Chamber of Deputies on March 18 by US legal experts called by the Italy-US Foundation.

Foundation Chairman Rocco Ghirlanda said "it will not be a counter-trial but will have the sole aim of comparing Italian and US judicial and trial systems and try to understand what a possible verdict might have been if a similar case had been tried in the United States".

In the 427-page ruling, made public Thursday, Massei and fellow judge Beatrice Cristiani said the case against Knox and Sollecito was "without gaps or inconsistencies".

Knox, a Seattle university exchange student living with Kercher, was sentenced to 26 years in jail and Sollecito, a Perugia University student from Perugia, to 25. They did not get a life sentence because they were first offenders.

Knox got one year more for defaming a local pub owner she initially blamed for the murder.

Both deny wrongdoing and are appealing.

The verdict, against Knox in particular, caused a strong reaction in the United States where 'pro-Amanda' groups who claimed she had been demonised by the press have rallied to support her appeal later this year. One of the United States' top lawyers, Ted Simon, will flank her Italian defence team.

Simon said in January: "Her conviction was a tragic mistake...but I'm certain that we'll be able to obtain her release with the new trial," he said.

The appeal is expected to focus on the DNA evidence which was already hotly contested in the first trial.

After the sentence, the Knox family said she had received a fair trial but the verdict was a ''big mistake''.

Under Italian law convicted criminals are entitled to two appeals. Knox and Sollecito's first appeal is expected to get under way this summer.

Their legal teams are confident of overturning the verdict or getting the jail terms shortened.

The US consulate is providing its customary support for Knox ahead of her appeal.

photo: Meredith Kercher at a party before her death