Amanda Knox returns to Italy for first time since acquittal
AMANDA KNOX is to return to Italy for the first time since being convicted, then ultimately acquitted, of the murder and sexual assault of Meredith Kercher, the British student she shared a house with in Perugia.
Miss Kercher was murdered in 2007 and the American spent four years in prison before having her conviction overturned. She has not set foot on Italian soil since.
Miss Knox said she would attend an event on “trial by media” and miscarriages of justice on June 15. The event is part of a three-day conference on wrongful convictions.
Miss Knox said: “I’m honoured to accept [the Italy Innocence Project’s] invitation to speak at this historic event and return to Italy for the first time.”
Miss Knox, who went to Seattle after her acquittal and embarked on a career as a writer, came to global attention during a tortuous, seven-year judicial process in various Italian courts. She complained of unfair treatment from the media and from prosecutors, one of whom once referred to her as “a she-devil focused on sex, drugs and alcohol” who “lived life on the edge”.
Guido Sola, one of the organisers of the event, said: “We wanted to invite her because we believe that she is an icon of trial by mass media.”
In January, Europe’s highest human rights court ordered Italy to pay €18,400 (£16,000) to Miss Knox after ruling that she was denied adequate legal representation.
Miss Knox accused Italian police of slapping her around the head, threatening her verbally and not giving her access to a lawyer when she was interrogated in the days after Miss Kercher was killed in Perugia, Umbria, in 2007.
Miss Knox and her boyfriend at the time were convicted, then acquitted, then reconvicted, then definitively acquitted by Italy’s highest court over the sexual assault and murder of Miss Kercher, from Coulsdon, London.
But her decision to come back to Italy was criticised as “inappropriate” by the Kercher family’s lawyer in Italy.
Francesco Maresca said: “This young woman should accept the verdict that she received and stop embarking on initiatives which seem designed to garner publicity.”