The Huffington Post is reporting today that Amanda Knox’s ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito paid a secret visit in March to the grave of murdered student Meredith Kercher.

Details of Sollecito’s surreptitious visit emerged during an Italian TV program to mark the sixth year anniversary of the murder in Perugia. It also came just days before he is due to attend the retrial ordered by Italy’s Supreme Court for the knife killing.

According to the program, Sollecito was taken to the cemetery at Coulsdon, Surrey, by an English friend of his during a sojourn to London seven months ago.

While at the grave, he “said a silent prayer” for the British student, but didn’t leave flowers.

The news that he went to Meredith’s grave will undoubtedly come as a shock to her family who have asked times that Knox stay away from Kercher’s final resting place. Knox, 26, has asked on several occasion to visit the grave.

Sollecito, now 29, did not ask for permission from Meredith’s family, and according to the program “said a silent prayer” for the British student, but did not leave any flowers.

The Kercher family have never accepted Sollecito and Knox’s insistence they had nothing to do with Meredith’s murder. The 20-year-old was found semi-naked with her throat cut in her bedroom in the house she shared with Knox and two Italian women.

Read the full story here.