Amanda Knox Release Challenged by Italian Prosecutors - East Idaho News
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Amanda Knox Release Challenged by Italian Prosecutors

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GETTY W 100611 AmandaKnoxArrivesInUS?  SQUARESPACE CACHEVERSION=1329242296573Kevin Casey/AFP/Getty Images(PERUGIA, Italy) — An Italian prosecutor wants to put Amanda Knox back in prison, saying Tuesday that he is “very convinced” that she killed her roommate Meredith Kercher.

Prosecutor Giovanni Galati filed a 112-page appeal seeking to throw out a court ruling that found Knox innocent of her roommate’s murder and set her free after four years in an Italian prison.

Galati said he is “very convinced” that Knox and her former Italian boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito killed Kercher Nov. 1, 2007. Kercher, Knox’s British roommate, was found dead in her room with her throat slashed.

Galati said the appeals court conclusion had “omissions and many errors,” according to ANSA, the Italian news agency.

The appeal challenges the court’s decision to allow an independent review of the forensic evidence on two key pieces of evidence, Kercher’s bra clasp that supposedly contained Sollecito’s DNA and the alleged murder weapon, which supposedly had both Knox and Kercher’s DNA on it. The court declined to allow a review of other evidence, Galati’s papers said.

Knox and Sollecito were freed after the independent review found that DNA evidence was badly mishandled, could have been contaminated and was so minute it was not legally credible.

In setting aside Knox and Sollecito’s convictions, the court said the prosecutor’s allegation, “was not corroborated by any objective element of evidence and in itself was not, in fact probable: the sudden choice of two young people, good and open to other people, to do evil for evil’s sake, just like that, without another reason.”

Tuesday’s appeal came more than four months after Knox, 24, and Sollecito, 27, were freed in a dramatic ruling in Perugia, Italy.

Knox has several legal issues still pending in Italy. She is appealing her conviction of slandering her former boss Patrick Lumumba, which she now claims she was pressured by Italian police to implicate during a marathon interrogation.

She faces charges of slandering her police interrogators for claiming that hit her in the head during the grilling.

Her parents also face slander charges for repeating their daughter’s claim about the police interrogation.

It’s not clear whether the Knoxes will return to Italy for more legal proceedings, but her Italian lawyer Carlo Dall Vedova said earlier this year that Amanda Knox “loves Italy,” and would return as a witness at her parents’ trial.

A third person, Ivory Coast-born drifter Rudy Guede, was convicted of taking part in Kercher’s murder in a separate trial. He is serving a 16 year prison sentence.

Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio

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