Italian prosecutors have lodged an appeal against the acquittal of US student Amanda Knox, accusing her of murdering her British housemate Meredith Kercher in the university town of Perugia in 2007.
Perugia prosecutor Giovanni Galati said he was "convinced" that Knox and her then Italian boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito were behind the gruesome killing.
Galati said the acquittal, which was based mainly on the admissibility of DNA evidence in the case, contained "omissions and many mistakes."
Knox and Sollecito, who had been sentenced to 26 and 25 years in prison, were acquitted on appeal in October after four years in prison.
A third person, a local Ivory Coast-born drifter named Rudy Guede, who like the other two has always denied the murder, is the only person still in prison for the crime which prosecutors described as a frenzied sex attack.
Knox, who returned to her home town of Seattle in the United States immediately after her acquittal, cannot be extradited back to Italy.
Last week Knox's lawyers appealed against a separate conviction for slandering her former employer, bar owner Patrick Lumumba.
In her first police interrogation she said that Lumumba was behind the murder and that she was in the house at the time of the killing.
She later claimed that she had been at Sollecito's house all night.
The same court that acquitted her sentenced her to time already served for slander and said she would have to pay compensation and legal fees to Lumumba.
'KNOX FAMILY NOT WORRIED'
Amanda Knox and her family say they're not worried about a decision by Italian prosecutors to appeal her acquittal on charges of killing her roommate in 2007.
Knox was on a University of Washington program to study in Perugia when her British roommate Meredith Kercher was killed. She and her ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, served four years in prison before an appeals court overturned their convictions.
"The appeal of Amanda's acquittal by the prosecution was not unexpected as they had indicated from the day of the verdict that they would appeal. We are not concerned about this appeal as Amanda's innocence was clearly and convincingly proven in her appeal trial. This is simply another example of harassment by the prosecution against Amanda and makes this terrible, painful incident continue to go on for Amanda, Raffaele and their families," the family said in the statement released on Tuesday by spokesman David Marriott.
Her US lawyer, Theodore Simon, also was not surprised by the appeal.
"While the prosecution, as expected, has appealed, very little has changed.
The appellate jurors conducted a thorough, painstaking, searching inquiry into the true facts and determined in a lengthy, logical and comprehensive decision, that Amanda Knox was not guilty of the tragic loss of Meredith Kercher," Simon said in a statement.
Knox returned to Seattle last year after her release from custody.
