New episode in a long legal saga: Amanda Knox, convicted and then acquitted of the murder of her roommate in Italy in 2007, will once again face Italian justice. She announced this Monday, June 3, 2024 that she would be returning to the peninsula this week as part of a defamation trial linked to this affair, reports theAFP.
Legal saga
Amanda Knox, a native of Seattle, in the north-west of the United States, was 20 years old when she was arrested with her Italian boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, for the brutal murder of Meredith Kercher. The latter, aged 21, was found raped and stabbed with 47 stab wounds in the apartment they shared in Perugia, in the center of the country, on 1er November 2007.
Convicted at first instance in 2009, they were found guilty again on appeal, then tried again and finally exonerated in cassation in 2015. The American had spent four years in prison in Italy.
Convicted for the first time in 2011
At the end of an interrogation in November 2007, Amanda Knox accused Diya Lumumba of being the author of the murder. But he was quickly exonerated completely. In 2011, she was sentenced to three years in prison for defamation against him, without however being sent back behind bars.
Amanda Knox had denounced Diya Lumumba during an interrogation during which investigators, according to her account, shouted at her, slapped her and threatened her. In 2019, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that she had not benefited from adequate legal protection or a professional interpreter during her interrogation and that her treatment had “compromises the fairness of the procedure as a whole”.
The trial will take place on June 5
“On June 5, I will enter the courtroom where I was previously convicted for a crime I did not commit, this time to defend myself again”wrote Amanda Knox, now 36, on X.
“I hope to clear my name once and for all of the false accusations […]. Wish me luck ! »she added
