Kelly cleared over child sex tape

A Chicago jury has acquitted US singer R Kelly of all 14 charges of child pornography against him.

He was found not guilty of making an explicit sex video that prosecutors had said showed him having sex with a girl as young as 13.

Both Mr Kelly and the alleged victim, now 23, denied they were the people shown on the tape, which the jury saw.

If found guilty, he had faced up to 15 years in prison. His hits include She's Got That Vibe and I Believe I Can Fly.

The Grammy award-winning singer, 41, was arrested in 2002 after the video was leaked to the Chicago Sun-Times newspaper.

The tape, 26-minutes long, showed a man having sex with an underage girl.

Conflicting testimony

The prosecution's chief witness was a woman who said she had had three-way sex with Mr Kelly and the alleged victim from the video, Associated Press news agency reported.

The defence attempted to discredit the witness, saying she had tried to extort money from Mr Kelly.

The defence argued that the man in the tape did not have a large mole on his back as does Mr Kelly, and that the tape could have been doctored.

An FBI expert told the court the tape was not faked but that it was a copy which had been duplicated several times.

During the trial, some relatives of the alleged victim testified that the girl on the tape was not their family member. Other relatives said they recognised the girl.