Amanda Knox to Face Italian Court in Slander Case, Seeking to Clear Her Name
American Amanda Knox is set to return to court in Italy on Wednesday in an effort to overturn a conviction for slander, marking the final legal battle following the high-profile killing of British student Meredith Kercher in 2007.
"I hope to clear my name once and for all of the false charges against me," Knox stated this week ahead of the court appearance.
In 2015, Italy's top court annulled Knox's conviction for the murder of her British flatmate, Meredith Kercher, after nearly a decade of legal battles that saw Knox twice found guilty. The brutal killing of 21-year-old Kercher and the subsequent trials captured global attention, sparking media frenzy on both sides of the Atlantic and inspiring various books and films.
Knox, who spent four years in an Italian jail before being eventually cleared along with her then-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, is now facing a retrial for a slander conviction. The charge stems from Knox wrongly accusing Congolese bar owner Patrick Lumumba of Kercher's murder, resulting in a three-year sentence that had no practical impact due to time already served.
Lumumba, who was detained for two weeks in 2007 before being released, was named by Knox during intense police questioning, which she claims occurred under duress.
In 2019, the European Court of Human Rights cited procedural errors during Knox's interrogation, and Italy's highest court subsequently ordered a retrial in the slander case last year.
Meanwhile, Rudy Guede, originally from the Ivory Coast, was separately sentenced to 16 years in jail for Kercher's killing, with the ruling stating that he acted alongside unnamed accomplices. Guede was granted early release in 2021.
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