Why is Amanda Knox facing a new trial in Italy?

Amanda Knox was first arrested in 2007 alongside her then-boyfriend for the death of her 21-year-old flatmate, Meredith Kercher.

Knox and her boyfriend were convicted and sentenced to more than two decades in prison, and the media painted the pair as degenerates who killed an innocent woman in a kink gone wrong.

Knox maintained her innocence throughout her trial and subsequent jailing. She was acquitted in 2011 after investigations found that police had not provided her with legal representation, coerced a confession and made numerous errors leading to Knox's conviction.

However, in 2013 the case was forced to a retrial in Italy, but yet again, two years later, she was acquitted after the Italian Supreme Court tossed out her conviction.

So why is Knox now facing another trial?

Well, whilst Knox's murder conviction was overturned in 2011, one charge was upheld: a slander conviction.

Knox, now 36, is facing a defamation trial after she claimed the owner of the bar she worked at in 2007, killed Kercher.

Diya "Patrick" Lumumba, who owned Le Chic where Knox worked part-time, provided an alibi and subsequently sued Knox for suggesting he was a murderer.

Knox appealed the conviction, as she had not been given legal representation, and on top of this was told by Italian police that getting a lawyer would make things worse for her.

She claims she gave statements about Lumumba during interviews where she was being questioned without requested representation.

The trial beings on 10 April in Florence.

On her podcast Labyrinths, Knox said she hoped the ruling would clear her of any wrongdoing and allow her to be free from any legal consequences of the 2007 murder.

She said any statements she made to police regarding Mr Lumumba were made “under the pressures of stress, shock, and extreme exhaustion.”

“On the one hand, I am glad I have this chance to clear my name, and hopefully that will take away the stigma that I have been living with,’’ she said.

“On the other hand, I don’t know if it ever will, in the way I am still traumatised by it. I am sure people will still hold it against me because they don’t want to understand what happened, and they don’t want to accept that an innocent person can be gaslit and coerced into what I went through.”

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