Make your voice heard!

A growing, worldwide network has formed to support Amanda and Raffaele and their families. You can get involved and stay informed by joining Internet forums, including:

– The members’ forum at injusticeinperugia.org
– United for Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito on Facebook
– The Free Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito cause on Facebook

American supporters can also help by thanking Senator Maria Cantwell for taking a stand on behalf of Amanda, and by asking your senators and congressional representatives, as well as the US State Department and President Obama, to support Amanda and her family in their ongoing struggle. The best way to contact these officials is by email. We suggest a short note with subject header of “Thank you for supporting Amanda Knox” for Senator Cantwell, and “Please support Amanda Knox” for other officials and for the State Department. For the email form on the White House website, we suggest you choose “I have a policy comment” and mention your support for Amanda Knox in the first sentence of your message.

“A railroad job from hell”

That is how Paul Ciolino, a top-rated private investigator, described the case against Amanda Knox on the CBS program 48 Hours. CBS engaged Ciolino to investigate the charges against Amanda, a college student from Seattle who is accused of killing her housemate in Perugia, Italy. He traveled to Perugia, performed a thorough investigation, and determined that Amanda is clearly innocent. But she has been in prison for over two years and has now been convicted of a murder she did not commit, all because the authorities will not admit they made a mistake.

The case in a nutshell

Meredith Kercher, a British student living in Perugia, Italy, was brutally murdered on the night of November 1, 2007. The crime involved a sexual assault and a struggle that left behind DNA, bloody shoe prints, and bloody fingerprints, all belonging to one man — Rudy Guede. Guede fled the country after the murder. He was tracked down, arrested, and brought back to Italy. In 2008, he was convicted of murder after choosing an abbreviated trial, and he has been sentenced to 30 years in prison.

Guede, and Guede alone, is responsible for Meredith’s tragic death.

But it took many days to analyze forensic evidence and identify Guede from police fingerprint records. The authorities were under intense pressure to solve the crime immediately and put the citizens of Perugia at ease. So they jumped the gun. Before they knew about Guede, they arrested three innocent people:

Amanda, who was Meredith’s housemate
Raffaele Sollecito, who was Amanda’s boyfriend
Patrick Lumumba, who ran a bar where Amanda worked part-time
On the day of these arrests, the authorities publicly announced an extraordinary conclusion — that this trio had murdered Meredith because she refused to join them in a group sex game.

Lumumba was released after about two weeks because he had an airtight alibi. But the authorities did not reconsider their basic theory when they realized Lumumba could not have been involved. Instead, they merely substituted Guede for Lumumba as the third participant.

The problem with this theory is twofold.

First, it is pure speculation. Amanda and Raffaele have never shown the slightest tendency toward violence or sexual aggression, nor have they ever been involved in group sex, nor is there evidence of a relationship between them and Guede.
Second, there is no real evidence that more than one person assaulted Meredith Kercher, or that Amanda and Raffaele were present when it happened.
Everyone agrees this murder involved a violent struggle. That is why Guede left so much physical evidence in his wake. But Amanda and Raffaele left none of the physical evidence one would expect if they had been involved in the crime. The few traces the police have come up with are so weak and ambiguous they prove nothing of importance and should have no place in a fair trial.

Click here to read more about the case and the evidence.

Wrongful prosecution happens all over the world, often when police and prosecutors take a public stance that later proves unsupportable. That is what has happened in this case. The authorities got out ahead of the evidence, they announced that they had solved the crime, and now they refuse to admit they were fundamentally wrong in their initial assessment. The plain truth is that Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito had no reason to wish Meredith harm, and neither was present when she was murdered. They are innocent.

Who we are

Friends of Amanda is a group of people who recognize that Amanda is innocent. We are not affiliated with her family, and no one is paying us. We simply want to see justice.