Amanda Knox has announced that she is to return to Italy next month for the first time since the country’s Supreme Court overturned her conviction for the murder of her former flatmate.
Guido Sola, one of the festival’s organisers, told CNN: “Amanda Knox is the icon of trials that the media carry out before the trial in court is conducted.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
“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 wrote on Twitter that she was “honored to accept their invitation to speak to the Italian people at this historic event”.
The trip is “one Knox apparently has been dreaming about for years as part of her own healing process”, says The Daily Beast’s Barbie Latza Nadeau.
But “her presence on this side of the Atlantic will be something akin to ripping off a scab for Kercher’s family, who have not yet been able to bring themselves to visit the country where this tragedy began”, the Rome-based journalist adds.
One of Kercher’s family members told Latza Nadeau: “One has to wonder why she is doing this, why we have to go through all this again. You don’t get used to the notion that your daughter’s killer has become a superstar any more than you get used to the fact that your daughter was murdered in the first place.”
Knox will take part in a panel titled Trial by Media, alongside Martina Cagossi, programme manager of the Italy Innocence Project, Andrea Mascherin, president of Italy’s bar association, and Vinicio Nardo, president of Milan’s bar association.
Cagossi told CNN that she personally invited Knox after meeting her in Atlanta. “Amanda always said that she wanted to return to Italy. And now the moment has come,” Cagossi said.
Kercher’s death and the subsequent investigations and court cases made headlines around the world, with US student Knox and her Italian boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, initially found guilty of stabbing the 21-year-old Briton to death.
They were acquitted and released from prison in 2011, before the guilty verdicts were reinstated in 2014. Following a lengthy appeal, the eight-year legal saga came to an end in 2015 when Italy’s highest court, the Court of Cassation, overturned the convictions.
That court later denounced “major flaws” in the police’s handling of the investigation, as well as the absence of a “body of evidence” allowing for a safe conviction or any admissible DNA evidence linking the pair to the murder.
The only person convicted of the crime is Ivory Coast national Rudy Guede, who is serving a 16-year sentence for the murder, although judges ruled that he did not act alone.
-
Israel: Losing the American publicFeature A recent poll finds American support for Israel's military action in Gaza has fallen from 50% to 32%
-
Unmaking AmericansFeature Trump is threatening to revoke the citizenship of foreign-born Americans. Could he do that?
-
EPA: A bonfire of climate change regulationsFeature The Environmental Protection Agency wants to roll back its 'endangerment finding,' a ruling that lets the agency regulate carbon emissions
-
How China uses 'dark fleets' to circumvent trade sanctionsThe Explainer The fleets are used to smuggle goods like oil and fish
-
One year after mass protests, why are Kenyans taking to the streets again?today's big question More than 60 protesters died during demonstrations in 2024
-
Superyachts are getting caught up in spy scandalsThe Explainer China and Russia have both been accused of spying maneuvers on the open sea
-
What happens if tensions between India and Pakistan boil over?TODAY'S BIG QUESTION As the two nuclear-armed neighbors rattle their sabers in the wake of a terrorist attack on the contested Kashmir region, experts worry that the worst might be yet to come
-
Why Russia removed the Taliban's terrorist designationThe Explainer Russia had designated the Taliban as a terrorist group over 20 years ago
-
Inside the Israel-Turkey geopolitical dance across SyriaTHE EXPLAINER As Syria struggles in the wake of the Assad regime's collapse, its neighbors are carefully coordinating to avoid potential military confrontations
-
'Like a sound from hell': Serbia and sonic weaponsThe Explainer Half a million people sign petition alleging Serbian police used an illegal 'sound cannon' to disrupt anti-government protests
-
The arrest of the Philippines' former president leaves the country's drug war in disarrayIn the Spotlight Rodrigo Duterte was arrested by the ICC earlier this month
