The only person convicted of the sexual assault and murder of British student Meredith Kercher in Italy in 2007 has been released from prison early for good behaviour.

Rudy Guede served 14 years of a 16-year jail sentence which he received after being found guilty of the sexual assault and murder of Ms Kercher, from Coulsdon in Surrey.

He was arrested and jailed shortly after the murder in November 2007 and then sent to trial in 2008, where he was found guilty of killing the British undergraduate, who had just arrived in Italy for a year of studying abroad.

Francesco Maresca, the Italian lawyer who represented the Kercher family during the years-long judicial saga, said the fact that Guede’s jail time had been reduced by two years was standard practice under the Italian legal system.

But he questioned whether the sentence of 16 years in prison had been enough.

“I think there could be a moral reflection on whether such a low sentence was sufficient for a murder of this kind,” he said.

He said he had not yet spoken with Ms Kercher’s family in the UK.

“It’s the conclusive moment of a very sad affair,” said Fabrizio Ballarini, Guede’s lawyer. “First thoughts must to go the victim and her family. Rudy has undergone an excellent course of rehabilitation.”

He said a magistrate in Viterbo, a town north of Rome where Guede had been in prison, had granted the early release.

Guede, 34, who was born in the Ivory Coast and came to Italy as a child, was a drifter and small-time drug dealer when he was accused of sexually assaulting and murdering Ms Kercher in her rented accommodation in the hilltop town of Perugia in Umbria.

Two other people were also accused – American undergraduate Amanda Knox, who was Ms Kercher’s flatmate at the time, and her then boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, an Italian student.