Amanda Knox can sue Italy for violating her rights during the trial over her late former roommate, British student Meredith Kercher, the European Court of Human Rights has ruled.
The BBC News reported Wednesday that Knox, a Seattle-area native, and her then-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, endured a legal rollercoaster in Italy after Kercher was found stabbed to death in a Perugia student flat she shared with Knox in November 2007. The couple was found guilty of the murder in 2009, but had the decision reversed in 2011.
The murder charges, though, were re-instated in 2014, and Italy's Court of Cassation acquit the couple again in a final verdict on March 28, 2015, noted the BBC News.
Rudy Guede, an Ivory Coast immigrant who was convicted in 2008 for Kercher's murder, charged during an interview on Italian television in January that Knox killed Kercher during an argument while he was in the bathroom of the flat,
The Daily Beast reported.
Knox charged that in the time leading up to the trial that she was subjected to hours of questioning without access to a translator — despite speaking limited Italian — being questioned without an attorney, and being subjected to inhumane treatment including "degrading slaps to the head," wrote the BBC News.
The human rights court decision has been sent to Italy so it can prepare a defense.
CNN wrote in 2015 that Knox and Sollecito both spent four years in prison during their initial trial, conviction, and first appeal. Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said that Italy pays about €12 million or $13.5 million for every year a person is held in prison who is later cleared of their charges.
Kercher family attorney Francesco Maresca said in 2015 that the family was "disappointed" that Knox's verdict was reversed.
"We expected more from the Italian judicial system," Maresca said. "This is a failure to find justice for Meredith."
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