Italy has been ordered by a European court to pay damages to Amanda Knox, the former American study abroad student who was convicted and later acquitted of murder.
The European Court of Human Rights ruled Thursday that Knox’s rights were violated in the immediate hours after she was arrested and brought into custody in the Italian city of Perugia for the murder of her British housemate, Meredith Kercher, in 2007, CNN reported.
The ECHR said that Italy should pay Knox about $20,800 for failing to provide her with a lawyer and an interpreter when she was first detained.
“In the court’s view, that initial failure had thus had repercussions for other rights and had compromised the fairness of the proceedings as a whole,” the court said.
Knox’s case and subsequent appeals were the focus of global news for years as her freedom was debated in the Italian judicial system until she was finally cleared of all charges in 2015.
“Today, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that my… conviction was unjust,” Knox said in a statement. “I am grateful for their wisdom in acknowledging the reality of false confessions, and the need to reform police interrogation methods. I remain forever grateful to everyone around the world who has believed in me, defended me, and spoken out on my behalf throughout the years. I couldn’t have survived this without your support.”
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