Rafaele Sollecito, former boyfriend of Amanda Knox, participated in his first interview since the Italian court released its explanation for reconvicting him and Knox of murder of British student Meredith Kercher in 2007.
Released Tuesday, the report noted that the two collaborated with the already-convicted Rudy Guede with the newly-introduced motive that Knox and Kercher were arguing over money when the discussion escalated into violence.
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Sollecito, alongside his lawyer, John Q. Kelly, appeared on Today on Friday from Treviso, Italy, to explain that he plans to fight the reasoning in the report. "I'm still detailing all the aspects of these reports, but basically it's full of errors,'' said Sollecito. "There are mistakes all over the pages. They invented new evidence. They pictured something happening that was never happening. They invented a fiction, a real fiction, inside their report. We are working to pinpoint every aspect on this report, and I will come up with the details of our appeal against this report."
Knox and Sollecito were convicted of the crime in December 2009, with Knox receiving a 26-year term and Sollecito 25 years. The conviction was overturned on appeal in October 2011, when their lawyers raised questions about the evidence, and the pair were freed. (In a separate trial, Guede received a 16-year sentence, and he remains in jail.)
Sollecito told Today that he returned to Italy for the trial because "here I have my dreams, my life, my friends, and I have nothing to hide. There's nothing against me, and nothing ever has been against me. I have really a clear conscience, and there's no reason for me to accept or understand the reason why I'm free, or I have to look at my back or my shadows for the rest of my life fleeing from this reality. I came back to face this ordeal because it is completely unbelievable. It is out of reality, and it's only a fiction." Knox did not appear at the trial and instead remained in Seattle.
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He also went on to explain that he was a "stranger," as he only knew Knox for six days and met Kercher twice -- as detailed in his book, Honor Bound: My Journey to Hell and Back With Amanda Knox. "Because I didn't know Meredith Kercher, I had no reason to argue with Amanda or with Meredith or with anybody in this case,'' he said. "I am completely a stranger in this case. There's nothing against me ... My position is even different from Amanda's one, so basically in this case, I have always been a stranger, and that's the reason why they still try to put me aside, to forget me, because there's no reason, there's no way to explain my participation in such a horrible murder."
Watch the video below:
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