Amanda Knox guilty in midnight verdict

In a dramatic late-night verdict, the Seattle student Amanda Knox and her Italian boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito were found guilty on Friday of the murder of the 21-year-old Leeds University student Meredith Kercher. Knox was sentenced to 26 years in jail and Sollecito to 25.

The Italian jury deliberated for approximately 12 hours before delivering their verdict soon after the local church bells chimed midnight in Perugia.

Their conviction came just over two years after Knox's housemate was found dead in a pool of blood, her throat slit, in the house the two girls shared in the ancient Umbrian city.

The families of both the murdered girl and the accused American were in Perugia to hear the verdict. Soon after it was delivered, the court announced that each of Meredith's parents, John and Arline Kercher, and each of her siblings - one sister and two brothers - would receive €1m in compensation for their loss, a total of €5m.

The verdict came despite Knox's plea to the jury this week - given in Italian, which she had learned in jail - that she should not be branded a killer. "I am afraid of being defined as something I am not and by actions that are not mine," she said. "I'm afraid of having the mask of a murderer forced on to my skin."

The prosecution's case was that Knox, 22, and Sollecito, 25, killed the British girl after she refused to take part in a sex game. While her boyfriend held Meredith down, Knox stabbed her in the throat.

Prosecutor Giuliano Mignini made the case that Knox had grown to hate the British girl who, he argued, disliked the American girl's unhygienic ways and her promiscuity. Mignini called Knox "narcissistic, aggressive, manipulative, transgressive, with a tendency to dominate".

Mignini told the court: "Amanda had the chance to retaliate against a girl who was serious and quiet. She had harboured hatred for Meredith... the time had come to take revenge on that smug girl."

Less than half an hour after the verdict, Knox was led sobbing from the court to be returned to the jail where she has spent the past two years.

It seemed the jury could not get out of their minds the overriding image of this long-running saga - the scene of 'Foxy Knoxy' giggling and doing cartwheels in the police station within hours of Meredith's body being discovered.

In Seattle, the verdict was met with shock among Knox's wider circle of family and friends. Some American legal experts felt that the prosecution case, with its reliance on hearsay and with little physical evidence produced, was so weak that it would never have reached court in the United States.

Knox and Sollecito will have two chances to appeal the verdict before the Court of Cassation, Italy's highest appeals court, has the final say. Knox's father told reporters: "We will fight on". ·