This article is more than 6 months old

This article is more than 6 months old

Two US students have appeared in an Italian court on the first day of their trial over the fatal stabbing last year of a police officer during a botched drugs bust.

Finnegan Lee Elder, 20, and fellow student Gabriel Christian Natale-Hjorth, 19, are charged with murdering Mario Cerciello Rega in central Rome on 26 July in an incident that shocked Italians.

Elder is accused of stabbing the officer after he intervened in a dispute that began over a drug deal involving the pair, police said at the time. The defendants, from San Francisco, have been held in Regina Coeli prison in Rome since their arrests.

Elder was wearing a blue-plaid shirt under a jacket and mouthed “I love you” to his parents, who were sitting in the back row of the courtroom, which was packed with journalists.

Natale-Hjorth, whose parents were not in court, sat directly in front of Cerciello Rega’s widow, who was accompanied by family members.

Both defendants were flanked by prison guards. Neither spoke on Wednesday’s opening day of the trial, which will continue next month.

The proceedings on Wednesday were limited to the admission of evidence and setting a timetable for future hearings.

Rome police officer allegedly killed by US students was unarmed Read more

The killing led to an outpouring of public sympathy for Cerciello Rega, who had just returned from his honeymoon when he was killed. Huge crowds attended his funeral – which was broadcast live on television – where he was hailed as a hero.

His widow, Maria Rosario Esilio, who is a civil party to the case, has said the killing of her husband “cannot and must not go unpunished”.

Police say Cerciello Rega, unarmed and in plain clothes, was stabbed 11 times by Elder with an 18cm (7in) blade as he was trying to arrest him and Natale-Hjorth on suspicion of stealing a backpack. Elder has said he did not know that Cerciello Rega was a police officer.

The case has been marked by major blunders – especially the blindfolding of Natale-Hjorth during his police interrogation – and contradictory statements made by a key prosecution witness, Cerciello Rega’s police colleague Andrea Varriale, who was in court.

Varriale initially said he and Cerciello Rega had been attacked by men of north African descent. He also claimed he had been armed. Both officers were in fact unarmed and acted without backup, in violation of police procedure.

Elder has admitted to stabbing Cerciello Rega with a serrated-edge combat knife but told investigators he thought he and his friend were being set upon by drug dealers.

“We hope that this trial can stay focused on the facts of what happened that night,” the Elder family said in a statement on Wednesday. “We look forward to the truth coming out and to Finn coming home.”

Amid the intense media focus on the case, comparisons have been made to the high-profile trial of Amanda Knox, the US student convicted and later acquitted of the 2007 murder of British exchange student Meredith Kercher.