Amanda Knox says 'The trial was carried out correctly'
Former student Amanda Knox reportedly said Tuesday that she has faith in Italian justice and hopes her guilty verdict for murder will be overturned on appeal.
Amanda Knox turns around during a final hearing at the court in Perugia, Italy, Dec. 4.
Luca Bruno/AP
Rome
Amanda Knox diplomatically tip-toed around the furore in the US over her 26-year-prison sentence for murdering her British flatmate, saying Tuesday that she felt she had received a fair trial but that she hoped the guilty verdict would be overturned on appeal.
The former college student from Seattle spoke publicly for the first time since Friday, when she burst into tears after a jury in the central Italian town of Perugia found her and her one-time boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito guilty of killing Meredith Kercher from Surrey, in southern England.
Journalists have not been allowed access to Knox but she spoke to an Italian MP who regularly makes prison visits and he conveyed her remarks to a respected daily newspaper, Corriere della Sera.
"The trial was carried out correctly," Knox told the legislator, Walter Verini, from the centre-left opposition Democratic Party. "My rights were respected."
"I still have faith in Italian justice. I have a crazy urge to be free but there is only one path I have chosen for leaving here, and that is the appeal that my lawyers are preparing," said Knox, dressed in a brown sweatshirt and brown T-shirt, according to Corriere della Serra, which doesn't make it clear whether the Italian MP recorded Knox's words or paraphrased it himself.
She said she was bitterly disappointed at being found guilty of the murder, in which she and Sollecito have always denied having any involvement.
"I thought I would be home for Christmas, but instead I have to wait," she said.
Treading lightly
