This article is from the source 'guardian' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/31/amanda-knox-fight-meredith-kercher-murder-conviction

The article has changed 2 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 0 Version 1
Amanda Knox vows to fight Meredith Kercher murder conviction 'to the end' Amanda Knox vows to fight Meredith Kercher murder conviction 'to the end'
(about 3 hours later)
Amanda Knox has said she will fight "until the very end" after being found guilty for a second time of the murder of Meredith Kercher, and that she would not return to Italy to serve her sentence. Amanda Knox has declared she would never go back to Italy willingly and would fight her reinstated conviction for the murder of Meredith Kercher "until the very end", as an emotional public battle over her possible extradition began in earnest a day after the guilty verdict was returned.
"I'm going through waves of emotion in response to it [the verdict]," she said. "My first reaction was, no, this is wrong." An emotional Knox vowed that she would fight tooth and nail to clear her name. "I'm going to fight this until the very end. It's not right, and it's not fair and I'm going to do everything I can," she said, through tears, in an interview with ABC's Good Morning America.
Knox, who denies murder, said she had originally intended to wait for her lawyers to tell her the verdict, but instead found an Italian television station online and heard the news of her conviction as it happened. Asked if she was prepared for extradition, should it happen, she said: "I'm not … This really has hit me like a train. I did not expect this to happen.
"I couldn't help myself," she said. "My whole family was there and I was listening and I'm the only one that knows Italian so I'm trying to listen and then tell them" "I really expected so much better from the Italian justice system. They found me innocent before. How can they say that it's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt?"
"My first reaction was, no, this is wrong and I'm going to do everything I can to prove that it is. And I felt very determined and my family felt very determined." Meanwhile, Kercher's relatives said they would fully expect an extradition to take place if the sentence became definitive next year.
On Thursday night, after almost 12 hours of deliberations, the Florence appeals court announced it was reinstating the murder convictions handed down in 2009 against the 26-year-old American and her Italian former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito. "If somebody – whoever that may be – can be convicted in a court of law and found guilty, that person should be punished as is appropriate," Lyle Kercher, Meredith's brother, said.
He was given a 25-year jail sentence, and ordered to surrender travel documents and not leave the country. Knox was given 28 and a half years in absentia. Sollecito, was apprehended by police early on Friday morning at a hotel close to the Austrian border. Refusing an extradition could cause the US problems "going the other way [with Italy] and probably with other countries", he said.
In an interview with ABC's Good Morning America on Friday Knox said she had spoken to the priest that she befriended in prison, who had reminded her "that people still believe in me". "I'm sure the American government try to extradite a lot of convicted criminals from abroad themselves so I guess they'll set a precedent if they didn't uphold their own laws."
Asked if she was prepared for extradition, should it happen, she said: "I'm not." However, many legal observers think it is highly unlikely that the US would let the extradition of Knox go ahead.
"This really has hit me like a train. I did not expect this to happen. I really expected so much better from the Italian justice system. They found me innocent before. How can they say that it's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt?" Knox, 26, and her former boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, were cleared on appeal in 2011 of killing Kercher, 21, a British exchange student in Perugia. But Italy's top appeal court, the court of cassation, quashed that ruling last year.
Knox repeated her statements in interviews with the Guardian, saying she would not go to Italy willingly. On Thursday night, after nearly 12 hours of deliberations, Knox was handed a 28-and-a-half-year sentence, while Sollecito, 29, was given a 25-year sentence. Both sentences were suspended pending appeal.
"I'm going to fight this until the very end. It's not right, and it's not fair and I'm going to do everything I can. Granted, I need a lot of help. I can't do this on my own and I can't help people understand this on my own," she said through tears. Sollecito, meanwhile, was found by police in a hotel in north-east Italy near the border with Austria, sparking speculation about his intentions. "How do I feel? I would like others to put themselves in my place," he told the Italian news agency Ansa.
She said she had written a letter to Kercher's parents. "Mainly I just want them to know that I really understand that this is incredibly difficult," she said. In its verdict, the Florence appeal court had ordered Sollecito to stay in the country and have his travel documents confiscated. Sollecito denied he had been planning to escape Italy, saying he had gone to Austria for a "trip" and had then returned when he heard the court's ruling.
"That they have also been on this never-ending thing and that when the case has been messed up so much, like a verdict is no longer consolation for them. And that just the very fact that they don't know what happened is horrible. A senior police officer said Sollecito, who disappeared from the courtroom on Thursday before the verdict was read, had spent the night with his girlfriend at a hotel in the village of Venzone, 40 miles from the border crossing. They had arrived together at 1am, he said.
"The thing that people really want when they've been victimised is just simple acknowledgement and they deserve respect and the consolation of some kind of acknowledgement, and that's being lost." "He has been cautioned that he is forbidden to leave the country," the police spokesman said. "His passport has been taken away from him and his identity card has been stamped to show that he must not leave Italy."
Speaking in Florence, Stephanie Kercher, Meredith's sister, said the verdict had just been the "next step" on a journey towards the verdicts being definitively confirmed. "As a free man, I was able to move around as I liked," Sollecito was quoted as saying. "Then I heard the sentence and I came back to Italy straight away. I was tired and I stopped at the first possible place."
Lawyers for Knox and Sollecito have said they will appeal against the decision, meaning the case is expected to go before Italy's highest court in spring next year. One of his defence lawyers, Luca Maori, said his client had told him he had "never thought of fleeing. Not before and especially not now".
"We hope that obviously coming into the [next hearing] we are near to the truth," said Stephanie Kercher. But she added: "I think we're still on a journey to the truth. It may be we don't ever really know what happened that night and that's something we'll have to come to terms with." The next stage in the long-running case is expected in the spring of next year, when the court of cassation is due to examine the appeals being brought by Knox and Sollecito.
It could either uphold the verdict and make the convictions definitive – in which case Italy could request Knox's extradition and Sollecito would be facing a return to jail – or send the case back for another appeal.
Speaking in Florence, Stephanie Kercher, Meredith's sister, said Thursday's ruling had just been a "step" on the path to a definitive conviction. But her family were resigned to the fact they might always remain in the dark about what happened on the night of 1 November 2007, she said. "I think we're still on a journey to the truth," she said. "It may be we don't ever really know what happened that night and that's something we'll have to come to terms with."
Rudy Guede, from Ivory Coast, has been definitively convicted of the murder and is serving a 16-year sentence in an Italian jail, but judges said they did not think he acted alone.
In her interview, Knox said she had sent the Kerchers a letter. "Mainly I just want them to know that I really understand that this is incredibly difficult," she said. "That they have also been on this never-ending thing and that when the case has been messed up so much, like a verdict is no longer consolation for them. And that just the very fact that they don't know what happened is horrible."
Stephanie Kercher said that while she had been told of the letter's existence she did not think she would be reading it. She also said she was unlikely to ever want to meet Knox, regardless of the legal outcome.
But Lyle acknowledged that the Seattle-based student was right when she said the verdict brought them little consolation. "No matter what the decision and whether it is finally upheld or not, nothing of course will ever bring Meredith back. Nothing will ever take away the horror of what happened to her," he said. "The best we can hope for is of course finally bringing this whole case to a conclusion … and then everyone can move on with their lives."