Amanda Knox returning to Italy for 1st time since acquittal

Amanda Knox has announced that she will return to Italy in June for the first time since being convicted and jailed, but then ultimately acquitted in 2015, of killing her British roommate in the hilltop town of Perugia.

Knox, a 31-year-old US citizen, will be attending a conference in Modena from June 13-15 on miscarriage of justice cases and "trial by media". The event is being organized by the Italy Innocence Project and the Camera Penale di Modena, an association of lawyers, CNN reported.

In 2007, Knox was arrested alongside her then-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, after the murder of her 21-year-old housemate Kercher. Kercher's body was found in the apartment she shared with Knox in Perugia and her throat had been slashed.

Knox spent four years in prison for the murder before eventually having her conviction overturned by Italy's Supreme Court in 2015. She has not set foot on Italian soil since.

"The Italy Innocence Project didn't yet exist when I was wrongly convicted in Perugia. I'm honoured to accept their invitation to speak to the Italian people at this historic event and return to Italy for the first time," Knox wrote on Twitter.

Guido Sola, one of the festival's organizers, told CNN: "Amanda Knox is the icon of trials that the media carry out before the trial in court is conducted."

"Amanda has been definitively acquitted in court, but in the popular imagination she is still guilty, because she has been the victim of a barbaric media trial."

Knox, who after her acquittal returned to her native Seattle and embarked on a career as a writer and commentator, shot to global attention during a tortuous, seven-year judicial process in various courts in Italy.

She complained of unfair treatment from the media and from Italian prosecutors, one of whom once referred to her as "a she-devil focused on sex, drugs and alcohol" who "lived life on the edge".

In January, Europe's top human rights court ordered Italy to pay 18,400 euros (16,000 pounds) to Knox after ruling that she was denied adequate legal representation.

Knox accused the Italian police of slapping her around the head, threatening her verbally and not giving her access to a lawyer or professional interpreter.

Knox and her then boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, were convicted, then acquitted, then reconvicted in 2014, then finally acquitted by Italy's highest court of the sexual assault and murder of Kercher.

The only person to have been convicted for the murder is Rudy Guede, a petty criminal and drug dealer born in the Ivory Coast who had been adopted by an Italian family in Perugia. He is serving a 16-year sentence.

--IANS

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