An appeal by Amanda Knox against her
three-year sentence for slandering Perugia former bar owner
Patrick Lumumba after she initially fingered him for the
Mereditch Kercher murder was upheld Friday by the supreme Court
of Cassation, which ordered a retrial of the American former
exchange student in Florence.
Knox initially fingered Congo-born Lumumba for the November 1,
2007 murder in the Umbrian city of 21-year-old British exchange
student and Knox's flatmate Meredith Kercher, 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.
Lumumba, who has since moved to Krakow in Poland with his wife
and two children, filed to oppose the suit from Seattle-born
and based Knox, who recently got pregnant with her second child.
Former Ivorian drifter Rudy Guede recently completed a 16-year
sentence for the murder of Leeds University student Kercher.
Knox has always contended she was pressured, also physically, in
a 24-hour grilling, into naming someone to blame for the murder,
in a case which gained headlines worldwide.
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