By Paolo Chiriatti
ROME (Reuters) -Italy’s highest court on Thursday upheld the conviction of American Amanda Knox for slander in a case related to the murder of her British flatmate in 2007, the final act in a legal drama lasting almost two decades.
An appeals court in Florence had last year handed Knox a three-year sentence for wrongly accusing Congolese bar owner Patrick Lumumba of killing Meredith Kercher in the city of Perugia.
Knox, 37, served four years in jail for the killing of Kercher before the conviction was annulled in 2015. She was aiming to clear her name in Rome’s Court of Cassation in the last legal case against her over the affair.
The sentence has no practical impact as it was covered by the time Knox spent in prison.
Lumumba welcomed the verdict.
“I am very satisfied. Amanda did wrong, this sentence must accompany her for the rest of her life. I had a good feeling about this since the afternoon. I hail Italian justice with great honour,” Lumumba said.
Knox, who lives in the United States, did not attend the court, but protested her innocence on X after the verdict.
“It’s a surreal day. I’ve just been found guilty yet again of a crime I didn’t commit,” she wrote.
Her lawyers also expressed their surprise at the outcome.
“We cannot believe it. A totally unjust decision for Amanda and unexpected in our eyes. We are incredulous, we take note and will read the motivations,” said Knox’s lawyer Luca Lupària Donati.
The stabbing of 21-year-old Kercher and multiple trials provided fodder for tabloids on both sides of the Atlantic and inspired books and films.
Rudy Guede, originally from the Ivory Coast, was sentenced to 16 years in jail for the killing of Kercher, in a ruling that said he acted with unnamed other culprits. He was granted early release in 2021.
(Reporting by Paolo Chiriatti, writing by Angelo Amante, editing by Ros Russell, Keith Weir and Cynthia Osterman)
