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Amanda Knox is hugged by her sister Deanna shortly after arriving in Seattle after her conviction was thrown out AP Photo/Elaine Thompson/File

Italy court orders retrial for Amanda Knox

Amanda Knox and her former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito were acquitted on appeal in 2011 for the killing of Meredith Kercher – but now face a retrial.

Updated 9.41am

ITALY’S HIGHEST COURT of appeal has overturned the acquittal of US student Amanda Knox and ordered a retrial over the murder of her British housemate in what prosecutors said was a drug-fuelled sex attack.

Knox and her Italian former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito – originally sentenced to 26 and 25 years in prison for killing and sexually assaulting Meredith Kercher in 2007– were acquitted on appeal in 2011 after four years in prison.

Both now face a retrial in a Florence court after judges upheld a 2012 prosecution appeal against their acquittals.

“It’s not been easy from the start. We have had to climb a mountain, but we draw great strength both from being innocent and from the fact the court’s ruling today is not a guilty verdict,” Sollecito’s lawyer Giulia Bongiorno said.

“The retrial means the court has decided some details need to be reviewed. The battle continues,” she said.

The judges were expected to rule on Monday, but unexpectedly sought more time for deliberations, pushing the decision back to Tuesday.

The postponement of the ruling until this morning had sparked unease among lawyers representing the former lovers at the Rome court. Sollecito’s lawyer Giulia Bongiorno said beforehand that the delay was “rare… and hard to interpret.”

Prosecutors addressing the court on Monday said they were convinced the former lovers were guilty of murdering Kercher. They called for the judges to “make sure the final curtain does not drop on this shocking and dire crime.”

The defence argued that errors in DNA evidence had seen Knox and Sollecito wrongly accused from the start and called for their acquittal to be upheld.

Knox and Sollecito could face a re-trial in Florence, though Knox will likely be tried in absentia.

The Seattle student returned home immediately after her release and the United States does not normally extradite its citizens to face legal action.

Carloa Dalla Vedova, the lawyer of Amanda Knox, talks to reporters in front of Italy’s Court of Cassation in Rome yesterday (AP Photo/Riccardo De Luca)

Kercher, 21, was found half-naked with her throat slashed in a pool of blood in her bedroom in the house that she shared with Knox in November 2007.

A third person, Ivory Coast-born drifter Rudy Guede, who like the other two has always denied the murder, is the only person still in prison for the crime.

Prosecutors had alleged that Kercher was killed in a drug-fuelled sex attack involving Knox, Sollecito and Guede. They had said that it was the American student who delivered the final blows while the other two held the victim down.

But the appeals judge quashed the convictions of Knox and Sollecito in 2011, largely over the admissibility of DNA evidence. The judges said the murder remained “unsolved” because it must have been carried out by more than one person.

Kercher’s family insists that 47 knife wounds on Meredith and the apparent use of two different knives in the attack meant that more than one killer was involved – which means that the second murderer is still at large.

In her first interrogation following the murder, Knox said – without a lawyer or an interpreter present – that she was in the house at the time, and falsely identified the owner of a bar where she worked as a waitress as the killer.

She later said that she was with Sollecito at his house all night and blamed her initial comments on exhaustion and police coercion.

The supreme court is also set to rule today on Knox’s appeal against a slander conviction for having blamed the bar owner, who was held in a cell for two weeks based on her allegations.

- © AFP, 2013

Read: Father of Meredith Kercher tells of moment he learned of daughter’s death >

Read: Kercher family ‘back to square one’ as Knox and Sollecito go free >

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    Mute Johnny Mason
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    May 19th 2018, 9:22 AM

    The old back door exit what a way to go !

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    Mute marty johnbann
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    May 19th 2018, 10:00 AM

    Should send it to may as reminder that he won’t forget the starvation of our people

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    Mute FlopFlipU
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    May 19th 2018, 10:13 AM

    @marty johnbann: yea because she caused it

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    Mute Peter gowan
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    May 19th 2018, 10:26 AM

    @marty johnbann: well said marty

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    Mute Rúairí O’ Sullivan
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    May 19th 2018, 7:24 PM

    What potato famine? Do you mean the British Genocide of the Irish people? This is established fact and calling the famine is pure ignorance

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    Mute P.J. Nolan
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    May 19th 2018, 9:26 PM

    @Rúairí O’ Sullivan:
    There is always one…

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    Mute Bruce van der Gutschmitzer
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    May 19th 2018, 1:05 PM

    Should it not read 19th century? Given the famine occurred in the 19th century??

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    Mute psychiatrist
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    May 19th 2018, 4:27 PM

    @Bruce van der Gutschmitzer: Don’t be so pedantic.

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    Mute John Considine
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    May 19th 2018, 4:32 PM

    @Bruce van der Gutschmitzer: it could have been made in the 18th.

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    Mute Joe O'riordan
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    May 19th 2018, 1:43 PM

    They should have used it todayfpr the wedding…

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    Mute Philip Murphy
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    May 19th 2018, 11:44 AM

    I find this to be offensive. We should bury this dark period of our history forever

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    Mute Rob
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    May 19th 2018, 11:55 AM

    @Philip Murphy: Burying our history, that would be an affront to all who died!

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    Mute eastsmer
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    May 19th 2018, 11:13 PM

    ‘Bring out your dead’ was the cry.
    Where are they from – Clonakilty (God Help Us)

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