Knox says she will appeal against calumny conviction

(ANSA) - ROME, AUG 16 - Amanda Knox on Friday criticised on X a sentence by an appeals court in Florence, convicting her of calumny for accusing Patrick Lumumba in relation to the 2007 murder of Meredith Kercher in Perugia.
    "I was unequivocally not at home when Meredith was killed, I was not involved and I don't know anything more than can be deduced from the evidence", said Knox after the motivation of the sentence was published by the appeals court.
    "Don't worry: I will be back", she wrote, saying she would appeal the conviction to Italy's supreme Cassation Court to "fight this thing". The appeals court in June confirmed a conviction against Knox in the calumny case.
    According to the motivation of the sentence issued by the Florence appeals court, Knox "unjustly" accused Lumumba, who was innocent, of Kercher's murder to "get out of the difficult situation in which she had found herself".
    The judges believe that Knox "was inside the house when the murder took place and thus knew well" that he "wasn't there", the motivation noted.
    The case concerned a three-year-term, which Knox has already served, for fingering former bar owner Lumumba in relation to the murder.
    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 after almost four years in jail.
    The 36-year-old writer filed the appeal to definitively annul the calumny sentence on the basis of a European Court of Human Rights ruling that her defence rights were violated during the initial investigation.
    Last October, the 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 Cassation, 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. (ANSA).