Knox wants Lumumba calumny acquittal at retrial

(ANSA) - ROME, APR 9 - 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. (ANSA).