Amanda Knox: I will never go willingly back to Italy

American student Amanda Knox says she'll never willing go back to Italy after a court there re-instated her murder conviction.

File

Amanda Knox speaking on Good Morning America.

Knox and her former Italian boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito have been found guilty for the second time of the 2007 murder of Briton Meredith Kercher, in a retrial that reversed an earlier appeal judgment.

In her first television interview since the verdict, she says she's shocked by the court's decision.

"I am going to fight this until the very end and it's not right, and it's not fair, and I am going to do everything I can," she told Good Morning America. "Granted, I need a lot of help. I can't do this on my own and I can't help people understand this on my own."

Sollecito found near border after verdict

Meanwhile, Raffaele Sollecito has been found by Italian police near the border after a court again found him and Amanda Knox guilty of the murder of a young UK student.

Raffaele Sollecito has been found by Italian police near the border after a court again found him and Amanda Knox guilty of the murder of a young UK student.

Amanda Knox's former Italian boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, says he had no plans to flee his country when police apprehended him near the north-eastern border with Austria and Slovenia, shortly after a murder conviction.

"I never thought about escaping. Not before, nor now," Sollecito said through one of his lawyers, Luca Maori.

The ANSA news agency reported that Sollecito made a brief foray into Austria on Thursday, just as a Florence appeals court was preparing to convict him and Knox for the 2007 murder of British student Meredith Kercher.

In a verdict issued late in the day, Sollecito was sentenced to 25 years in prison and banned from travelling abroad, while Knox, who stayed in the US and was tried in absentia, was sentenced to 28 and a half years.

Overnight, officers caught up with Sollecito in the north-eastern village of Venzone, which is a few dozen kilometres away from crossings with Austria and Slovenia. He was in a hotel with his current girlfriend, air hostess Greta Menegaldo.

Sollecito was not arrested, but taken to police headquarters in Udine to have his passport confiscated. He left the facility in the early afternoon, driving a Mini Cooper car that had an Austrian motorway stamp on its windscreen.

On Thursday morning, he was in Florence for the final hearing before the court retired to deliberate, but cancelled plans to return for the verdict, fuelling speculation about his possible escape.

Neither Sollecito nor Knox face immediate imprisonment, as they are expected to challenge their convictions, making them non-enforceable until final judgment is passed by Italy's top appeals body, the Court of Cassation.

The legal saga over the Kercher murder has been going on since the 21-year-old was found dead on November 2, 2007, in the central Italian university town of Perugia.

She was lying half-naked, with multiple stab wounds, in the flat she shared with Knox and others.

Knox and Sollecito were arrested days after the crime.

They were convicted in 2009, then acquitted and freed on appeal in 2011, and then put on trial again last year after the Court of Cassation quashed the previous judgment.

The 2011 acquittal came after incriminating DNA samples, testimonies and other evidence were dismissed by Perugia appeal judges.

Italy's top court said they were wrong to do so, and moved proceedings to Florence, where opposite conclusions where reached.

Relatives of the victim said on Friday it was frustrating to deal with the twists and turns of the Italian legal system, but insisted that they still had confidence in it.

"This was always a scenario, with convictions, appeals and counter appeals," Meredith's brother, Lyle, said. "It is incredibly difficult for us," he added.

"We are still on the journey to the truth," said Meredith's sister, Stephanie. "It may be that we will never know what happened that night," she added.

Francesco Maresca, a lawyer for the family, said a new round of appeals by Knox and Sollecito before the Court of Cassation - presumably the final stage in the long-running legal saga - would take about a year.

Speaking amid reports that Knox had written a letter to her family, Stephanie Kercher said they would not consider reading it until the end of judicial proceedings.

"It is not something we would want to do [now] and I can't say if we ever will," she said.


Share
4 min read

Published

Updated

Source: AAP

Tags

Share this with family and friends


Get SBS News daily and direct to your Inbox

Sign up now for the latest news from Australia and around the world direct to your inbox.

By subscribing, you agree to SBS’s terms of service and privacy policy including receiving email updates from SBS.

Download our apps
SBS News
SBS Audio
SBS On Demand

Listen to our podcasts
An overview of the day's top stories from SBS News
Interviews and feature reports from SBS News
Your daily ten minute finance and business news wrap with SBS Finance Editor Ricardo Gonçalves.
A daily five minute news wrap for English learners and people with disability
Get the latest with our News podcasts on your favourite podcast apps.

Watch on SBS
SBS World News

SBS World News

Take a global view with Australia's most comprehensive world news service
Watch the latest news videos from Australia and across the world