Amanda Knox has decided not to return
to Italy to attend the start of the retrial of a calumny case
against her in Florence on Tuesday, her lawyer told ANSA.
The lawyer, Carlo Dalla Vedova, said Knox, now a professional
writer and journalist, will stay in Seattle with her two small
children for the moment, "one of them only born a short time
ago".
The case regards a three-year-term, which Knox has already
served, for fingering former bar owner Patrick Lumumba in
relation to the murder of Meredith Kercher.
Knox initially identified Congo-born Lumumba over the November
1, 2007 murder in the Umbrian city of the 21-year-old British
exchange student, a crime for which the American was first
convicted with her Italian ex boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito and
finally acquitted.
Knox, 36, filed the appeal to definitively annul the sentence on
the basis of a European Court of Human Rights ruling that her
defence rights were violated during the initial investigation.
In October Italy's supreme Court of Cassation overturned the
conviction and ordered a retrial.
Knox and Sollecito were arrested five days after the murder and
convicted by a court of first instance, but this conviction was
subsequently overturned.
The appeal sentence was then thrown out by the Court of
Cassation, Italy's supreme court, which ordered a new trial on
appeal leading to their re-conviction in 2014.
Knox and Sollecito were eventually acquitted definitively by the
supreme court the following year.
Rudy Guede, an Ivorian, was convicted and sentenced to 16 years
for the murder.
He was released from prison in November 2021 after serving 13
years.
In February a court ordered hm to be placed under special
surveillance after he was found guilty of beating his ex
girlfriend.
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