Amanda Knox: I will not return to Italy for Meredith Kercher murder retrial

26-year-old dismisses suggestion as 'not a possibility'

Amanda Knox has said she will not return to Italy to be retried (AP)

Amanda Knox has said she will not return to Italy to be retried for the 2007 murder of British student Meredith Kercher, in interviews with the US and Italian media.

Knox, 26, who spent four years in an Italian prison before being freed on appeal in October 2011, told NBC's Today Show that she would not travel from the US to attend the upcoming retrial in Florence: “It's not a possibility, as I was imprisoned as an innocent person and I just can't relive that.”

Despite her release in 2011, prosecutors convinced Italy’s Supreme Court in March this year to order a retrial, which is due to start on 30 September. Her former Italian boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, 29, will also be retried for the killing.

Ms Knox told the NBC show: “I was already imprisoned as an innocent person in Italy, and I can't reconcile the choice to go back with that experience.”

She told La Repubblica newspaper, however, that she could not attend the trial in Florence, “because those days coincide with the beginning of the school year. I’ll have to go to lessons. I’m trying to rebuild my life here and I’m doing it by studying”.

The family of Ms Kercher, 21, who was found with her throat slashed in the Perugia apartment she shared with Ms Knox, have welcomed the retrial, however.

International law experts have said that even if Ms Knox were definitively convicted, then US authorities would probably cite the double-jeopardy clause in an 1983 bilateral US-Italy treaty in order to block any extradition request.

The only person behind bars for the murder is Rudy Guede, a local drifter born in Ivory Coast, whose DNA was all over the crime scene.

But based on the physical evidence, prosecutors say the murder could not have been carried out by one person.

Asked by La Repubblica what she would say to the judges in Florence given the chance, Ms Knox said: “I would repeat that I did not kill my friend Meredith. I have suffered a great deal from this experience. I trust them [the judges]; I think they are intelligent people who evaluate the facts. I have faith in the facts. I’m expecting a fair verdict.”