ROME: US student Amanda Knox emailed the Italian court hearing her murder retrial saying she was afraid to attend and was not a “monster”, in what the judge yesterday branded an unusual move.
“If you want to speak at the trial, come to the trial,” said appeal court judge Alessandro Nancini before reading out her email in the courtroom in Florence. Knox has been in the US ever since an appeal court acquitted her in 2011 over the 2007 killing of British student Meredith Kercher, a ruling that was overturned by the supreme court earlier this year.
“I am not present at the hearing because I am afraid. I am afraid that the vehemence of my accusers you will leave an impression on you, that their smoke in the eyes will blind you,” Knox’s email was quoted as saying.
“I am not a monster,” she said.
She said Kercher, her housemate and alleged victim, was “a friend.
“I liked her, she helped me, she was generous and funny, I never criticised enough,” she said, following accusations from prosecutors that a deep rift between the two was the basic motive for the murder.
Referring to a partial confession that she made to investigators in the days after the murder, Knox said that she had been “tortured psychologically”.AFP
