Amanda Knox has said an Italian court’s decision to uphold her slander conviction for wrongly accusing a bar owner of murdering the British student Meredith Kercher was “unfair and incorrect” and vowed to continue her fight against “this injustice”.
Knox, 36, left through a back exit of a Florence appeals court on Wednesday and cancelled a planned press conference after judges rejected her appeal to have the conviction dropped.
In an exclusive interview with Sky TG24 airing in Italy on Thursday night, filmed close to Perugia, the Umbrian university town where Kercher was killed, Knox said she was “really disappointed” by the verdict.
“I haven’t slept,” she said. “I feel sad but I’m determined. I have nothing to hide and I will never stop telling the truth. I didn’t slander Patrick [Lumumba, the bar owner]. I didn’t kill my friend. I will come back here as many times as I have to in order to fight against this injustice.”
Knox, who along with her Italian ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito spent four years in prison after being convicted over Kercher’s murder before being definitively acquitted in 2015, had asked for the slander conviction to be dropped on the basis of a ruling by the European court of human rights in 2019 that said her defence rights had been violated during police questioning in 2007. Italy’s top court ordered a retrial of the slander charge in October.
Kercher, a 21-year-old student from Coulsdon, south London, was murdered in the home she shared with Knox in November 2007. Her body was found in her bedroom, partly undressed, with multiple stab wounds. She had been sexually assaulted.
Knox, who was depicted by the British press as “foxy Knoxy”, was handed a three-year jail term after wrongly accusing Lumumba, who owned a bar where she worked part-time in Perugia, of having committed the crime.
Lumumba spent two weeks in jail and was released only after a witness came forward with an alibi for him. Knox’s sentence was served during the four years she was imprisoned before being found not guilty of Kercher’s murder on appeal in 2011.
Lawyers for Knox, who at the time was a 20-year-old student who spoke basic Italian, argued she made the allegation against Lumumba under police duress and did not have legal assistance or an interpreter.
Knox alleged she was “psychologically tortured” by the police during questioning. She said: “It was the worst experience of my life. They made me think I was crazy.”
She said she had been “unjustly accused” for 17 years. “That is, my entire adult life. I spent four years in prison as an innocent person.”
Asked about those who still did not believe her innocence, Knox said: “If people really took the time to see the documents then they will believe in my innocence and not in a fantasy that doesn’t exist.” She added: “I’m not foxy Knoxy, I’m Amanda Knox.”
Rudy Guede, who was the only person definitively convicted of the murder, was released from prison in November 2021 after completing 13 years of a 16-year-sentence.
