ROME—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. However, the pair say they had acted in self defense because they thought the two policemen, who were not in uniform at the time, were thugs out to get them after a botched attempt to buy drugs. The court rejected their testimony and handed down the toughest punishment possible in Italy. Under Italy’s penal code, criminals serving life terms can be eligible for parole after 21 years, if they have a good behavior record. The defense lawyers immediately announced …