Suspect in UK Student`s Murder Held in Germany

Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi, who was visiting German Chancellor Angela Merkel, thanked Germany on hearing the news.

German police have arrested a man in connection with the murder in Italy of British student Meredith Kercher after he was caught on a train without a valid ticket.

A police spokesman in the western town of Mainz said 21-year-old Rudy Hermann Guede, identified by Italian police as a fourth suspect in the case, was removed from a train on a scenic Rhine River route bound for Mainz.

"He didn't have any identification papers so he was taken off the train by the police ... it was discovered that he was likely wanted in connection with the murder," Achim Hansen, spokesman for Mainz police, said.

Guede at first refused to reveal his name to German police and then gave police a false name. Growing suspicious, police took his fingerprints to the Federal Police Office (BKA) in Wiesbaden, where his identity was determined.

Hansen said that he could not say at this point why Guede, who is from the Ivory Coast, was in Germany.

The arrest was first confirmed by Italian police in Rome.

PRODI THANKS GERMAN POLICE

Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi, who was visiting German Chancellor Angela Merkel, thanked Germany on hearing the news.

"I would like to thank the German police because they arrested the Ivory Coast citizen who was wanted following a murder in Perugia. He was captured in Koblenz and the news has just arrived. It is important for us," he told a news conference north of Berlin.

Kercher, a 21-year-old exchange student, was found dead in her bedroom with a deep cut to the throat in the university city of Perugia, about 130 km (80 miles) north of Rome, on Nov. 2.

Her American flatmate Amanda Knox, 20, Knox's Italian boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, 24, and a Congolese man, Lumumba Diya, 37, who runs a bar in Perugia, have been in police custody since Nov. 6 on suspicion of involvement in the killing.

Italian media said Guede had been living with an Italian family in Perugia but went missing after the murder.

Prosecutors believe Kercher, on a year's study trip from Leeds University, was killed because she refused to have sex with one or more assailants.

The three suspects held in Italy all say they are innocent, although Knox initially accused Lumumba Diya of the killing and said she had had to cover her ears to drown out her friend's screams, according to media leaks of the investigation.