Raffaele Sollecito, Amanda Knox's ex-boyfriend, spoke out Friday about why he refused to implicate his girlfriend of just seven days when the couple was accused of murdering Knox's roommate Meredith Kercher back in 2007.
Knox, then an American college student from Seattle, was studying abroad in Perugia, Italy, when she met and started dating Sollecito. After just a week, the pair was arrested for allegedly murdering Knox's British roommate.
Knox, now 25, was sentenced to 26 years following her initial conviction. Sollecito was sentenced to 25 years. But, in 2011, an Italian appeals court threw out their convictions and harshly criticized the prosecution's handling of evidence. Knox and Sollecito were free after serving four years in an Italian prison.
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Sollecito, author of 2012's "Honor Bound: My Journey to Hell and Back with Amanda Knox," detailed his
decision not to turn on the woman he barely knew in an exclusive interview with the "Today" show's Savannah Guthrie Friday.
"I had to be very serious and not playing a game with some people who wanted this game to be played," he said. "[Amanda] told me that she thinks that I'm a kind of hero, but I don't feel so. And I don't need any kind of gratitude... I did it because I know it’s the truth. It's the good thing to do. It's the only way for me."
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In March, Italy's highest court overturned Sollecito and Knox's acquittals and ordered a new trial to begin within the next year. But Sollecito said he is not worried about the possibility of going back to jail.
"It's something like a very far-away thought in my mind. I already know that I'm innocent and we already have proved it, so for me, it's kind of nonsense," Sollecito said on "Today." "I'm innocent, and we got evidence of our innocence, so we will fight until the end without any worry."
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