Amanda Knox had implicated barman Patrick Lumumba in the 2007 murder of her flatmate, Meredith Kercher, in Italy. Reacting to the ruling on Thursday, she described it as "surreal."

Italy's highest court upheld the conviction of American citizen Amanda Knox for slander on Thursday, in a case that has been ongoing for almost two decades.

Knox was convicted last year of slandering local bar owner Patrick Lumumba by falsely implicating him in the 2007 murder of her British flatmate, Meredith Kercher. However, DNA evidence later revealed that another man, Rudy Guede, was responsible for Kercher's death, leading to his conviction. Guede was sentenced to 16 years in prison but was released early in 2021.

Knox, who was absent from Italy during the verdict, expressed disbelief, calling the decision "surreal." On the social media platform X, she stated, "I've just been found guilty yet again of a crime I didn't commit."

Her lawyer, Carlo Dalla Vedova, also voiced shock at the ruling, calling it "totally unexpected in our eyes and totally unjust for Amanda."

Patrick Lumumba, the man Knox had wrongly accused, welcomed the court's decision. He said he was satisfied with the outcome, adding, "Amanda was wrong. This verdict has to accompany her for the rest of her life."

Amanda Knox's background:

Knox was a 20-year-old exchange student in Perugia, Italy, when her British roommate, Meredith Kercher, was found murdered in her bedroom on November 2, 2007. Initially, Knox and her then-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, were convicted of the crime in a 2009 trial. However, the conviction was overturned in 2011, and Knox returned to the United States. A retrial in 2014 resulted in another guilty verdict, but in 2015, Italy’s highest court cleared her of all charges.

Despite this, Knox's conviction for slander remained intact. During police questioning, she had named Lumumba as the murderer, which led to his wrongful imprisonment for two weeks before he was released without charge. Knox later claimed that Italian police had threatened her with a 30-year prison sentence and used violence to coerce her into falsely accusing Lumumba.

In 2019, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Knox had not received proper legal representation or a professional interpreter during her police interrogation. Knox appealed her slander conviction, citing this ruling, but her appeal was rejected in 2024, when a Florence court sentenced her to three years in prison. The sentence, which was upheld on Thursday, had no practical effect, as it had already been covered by the time Knox had spent in prison related to the murder charge.