US tourists imprisoned for life by Italian court for murdering policeman

The pair say they had acted in self-defence because they thought the two policemen, who were not in uniform at the time, were thugs. [Reuters]

Two American tourists were sentenced to life in prison by an Italian court on Wednesday for the 2019 murder of a policeman near their Rome hotel in a case that shook the nation.

Finnegan Lee Elder, who was 19 at the time, had admitted to stabbing Mario Cerciello Rega in the early hours of July 26, 2019, while his friend Gabriel Christian Natale-Hjorth, then 18, was tussling with another police officer.