Amanda Knox was voted a personality of the year in Italy

Perugia is set to become gridlocked with television satellite trucks.

Around 150 journalists are expected to descend on the central Italian town to cover the murder trial of 21-year-old British student Meredith Kercher.

And they are prepared for the long haul. The trial could last until July.

The prosecution alone has filed a list of 90 witnesses and the court will sit only two or three times a week.

The raw facts surrounding the death of Meredith Kercher - she died on 1 November 2007 between 2030 and 2300 in Perugia - are not in dispute.

Pretty much everything else is.

Which is how we've arrived at this point of two people on trial for killing her.

Throat cut

Meredith Susanna Cara Kercher was from Coulsdon, South London, and was a student at Leeds University.

She was part of the Erasmus student exchange programme and it took her to Perugia.

She became a friend of, and shared a house with, Amanda Knox, an American student from Seattle in Washington State.

Amanda Knox had a boyfriend called Raffaele Sollecito, another student at the University of Perugia.

Police say Meredith's body was found under a *lo**-soaked duvet in an upstairs bedroom of the house she lived in with Amanda Knox. Her throat had been cut.

Initially, detectives believed she may have been attacked by a burglar, as the door to her room was locked and one of her windows broken.

Meredith Kercher was a British student in Italy

But they now suspect the break-in was staged.

They believe that Miss Knox stabbed Miss Kercher while Mr Sollecito held her down and a third man tried to rape her during a sex game that went badly wrong.

That third man is Rudy Guede, who has already been convicted of killing Meredith after a separate trial last year. He was given a 30-year life sentence.

Miss Knox and Mr Sollecito claim to have been together at Mr Sollecito's apartment at the time of the murder and therefore could not have done it.

That apparently contradicts earlier statements to the police in which Miss Knox stated she had heard Meredith's screams and that she had put her fingers in her ears as she was so frightened.

Her defence team say that her memory was clouded because she had been smoking hashish that evening.

But police say they have more evidence.

They say they found Miss Knox's DNA and Meredith's DNA on a knife in Mr Sollecito's kitchen which investigators believe is the murder weapon.

They also claim there were traces of Miss Knox's *lo** mixed with Meredith Kercher's in their bathroom.

And they say there were traces of Mr Sollecito's DNA on a clasp from Miss Kercher's bra.