Italian court upholds slander conviction against Amanda Knox

Italy’s highest court has upheld a slander conviction against Amanda Knox, the US citizen who was convicted and then acquitted of the murder of British student Meredith Kercher in Perugia in 2007.

The charge relates to her accusation that Patrick Lumumba, the Congolese owner of a bar where she worked at the time, was involved in Kercher’s killing.

He was arrested and detained for several weeks despite the lack of evidence against him.

Knox’s defence team contests the slander charge, arguing that she was pressured into making the accusation against Lumumba after a long night of questioning, during which Italian police fed her false information.

The European Court of Human Rights found that the force had not allowed her a lawyer or an adequate translator, paving the way for the slander case to be re-examined.

The now 37-year-old was re-convicted of slander in June, a decision that was upheld on Thursday.

The ruling could bring a 17-year legal saga to an end. Along with her then-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, Knox was accused of killing her housemate Kercher, whose throat was slit.

The pair were convicted before the decision was overturned in 2011. They were then fully exonerated by the Cassation Court four years later.

Rudy Hermann Guede from the Ivory Coast was eventually found guilty of the murder after his DNA was found at the crime scene. He was released in 2021 after serving 13 years of a 16-year sentence.

Reacting to the verdict in the slander case, Lumumba, who now lives in Poland, said he was satisfied with the decision.

“Amanda was wrong. This verdict has to accompany her for the rest of her life,“ Lumumba said. Earlier, he had told reporters that Knox had “never apologised to me.”

Meanwhile, Carlo Dalla Vedova, Knox’s lawyer, expressed shock at the verdict. “We are incredulous. This is totally unexpected in our eyes, and totally unjust for Amanda.”

Knox, who now campaigns on behalf of the wrongly convicted, maintains her innocence. “I’ve just been found guilty yet again of a crime I didn’t commit,” she wrote on X.

Despite being sentenced to three years in prison in 2009 for slander, the mother-of-two does not face further jail time. This is because she spent four years behind bars between 2007 and 2011.