Crime Amanda Knox Is Back in Italy For First Time Since She Was Acquitted of Roommate's Murder in 2011 Amanda Knox was cleared of her roommate's murder and released from prison in 2011 By Greg Hanlon Published on June 13, 2019 11:55 AM Share Tweet Pin Email Amanda Knox is back in Italy for the first time since 2011, when she was freed from prison after an appeals court acquitted her of the 2007 slaying of her British roommate. CNN reports Knox, 31, landed in Milan on Thursday is headed to the northern city of Modena, where on Saturday she will appear as a guest speaker on a panel discussion on wrongful convictions organized by the Innocence Project. The Associated Press reports Knox was accompanied to Italy by her mother and fiancée and was escorted through the airport by plainclothes officers. Knox was an American student studying abroad in Perugia in 2007 when she was accused of brutally murdering roommate Meredith Kercher, 21, who was found half-naked with her throat cut in her bedroom. Knox, who was 20 at the time of the killing, and her then-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, were both convicted of the murder. Prosecutors alleged the crime had taken place during a sex game run amok, though hard evidence against the young couple was scant. Knox and Sollecito spent four years in prison before their convictions were overturned in 2011. However, the pair were convicted again in absentia in 2013 before being acquitted again in 2015. Amanda Friedman Amanda Knox to Return to Italy for First Time Since She Was Falsely Convicted of Murdering Roommate In January 2019, the European Court of Human Rights ordered Italy to pay $20,000 in damages to Knox for failing to provide her legal assistance during her initial questioning after Kercher’s murder, according to the AP. Antonio Calanni/AP/Shutterstock • Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Click here to get breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases in the True Crime Newsletter. Before she left for the event in Italy, Knox posted a photo to Instagram of herself and fiancé Christopher Robinson, writing, “Here we go… Wish us, ‘Bon Viaggio!” Knox wrote on Twitter she is not doing interviews ahead of the event, but she wrote an essay for Medium saying she feels mistreated by the media and the sensational coverage of her case. Amanda Knox on Rebuilding Her Life 7 Years After Being Released from Italian Prison Amanda Knox. Lou Rocco/ABC via Getty Images “Thrust into the spotlight against my will in 2007, the year of the iPhone and the takeoff of Twitter and Facebook, the most intimate details of my life — from my sexual history to my thoughts of death and suicide in prison — were taken from my private diary and leaked to the media,” she wrote. “They became fodder for hundreds of articles, thousands of posts, and millions of hot takes.” Amanda Knox on Falling in Love & Wanting Kids — and What She Will Tell Them About Her Prison Ordeal In May, Knox announced her appearance at the Innocence Project event on Twitter, writing, “The Italy Innocence Project didn’t yet exist when I was wrongly convicted in Perugia. I’m honored to accept their invitation to speak to the Italian people at this historic event and return to Italy for the first time.”