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“It hit me like a train. I didn’t expect this to happen. They found me innocent before; how could they?”

She told Good Morning America that she has gone through “waves of reaction” and it’s “only on my way here that I got my first cry.”



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The University of Washington student was sentenced to 28 1/2 years in prison, raising the spectre of a long legal battle over her extradition.

Knox, 26, said she and her family “have suffered greatly from this wrongful persecution.”

“This is an experience that I have to testify to, that really horrible things can happen and you have to stand up for yourself,” she said.

John Kerry, the U.S. secretary of state, would ultimately be responsible for either approving a request and forwarding it to the U.S. justice department for processing in the courts, or rejecting it.

Knox would also then be under threat of arrest and deportation to Italy if she travelled to any other country that holds an extradition treaty with Rome. This includes Canada, several major Latin American states, Australia, New Zealand and most of Europe.

Asked at a briefing in March last year what the state department would do, Patrick Ventrell, a spokesman, said: “We never talk about extradition from this podium in terms of individual cases.”

Knox had remained in Seattle during the trial. David Marriott, a family spokesman, said Knox awaited the ruling Thursday at her mother’s home. After the decision was announced, a person believed to be Knox emerged from the house. That person, surrounded by others and covered by a coat, got into a vehicle and was driven away.