How Amanda Knox has captivated the global media

Amanda Knox arrives in court on January 16

American exchange student is a media celebrity in Italy where she goes on trial today charged with murdering former roommate Meredith Kercher

FIRST POSTED JANUARY 16, 2009

After spending 14 months in an Italian jail, 'Foxy Knoxy', aka the Seattle student Amanda Knox, finally went to court today charged with murdering the English student Meredith Kercher in the cottage they shared in Perugia.

Reporters were herded into a cage - originally designed for terrorists - to witness the 21-year-old with the angelic good looks and a reputation for sexual deviance face Judge Giancarlo Massei from the dock of the Umbrian capital's medieval courthouse.

Knox has become a media superstar in Italy where it is long forgotten that she got her nickname for her skills on the soccer pitch and not her sexual appetite.

Mignini alleges that Kercher’s death was the result of a Hallowe’en rite

She constantly appears on magazine covers, and in an Italian 'women of the year' poll last year beat local-girl-made-good Carla Bruni and frontierswoman turned VP candidate Sarah Palin.

While in prison, Foxy's every move has been reported: how local nuns taught her to dance, her pleas to her family to send warm socks and thermal underwear, even a bizarre controversy over whether her walk-on role in a prison video, in which she recited Hamlet's "To be or not to be" speech, should be screened at the Batik film festival in Perugia.

Amanda Knox is escorted from the court in Perugia after a hearing in September 2008. She has been in jail for more than 14 months

(To the dismay of the festival director, Alessandro Riccini Ricci, the film was pulled after representations from Knox's lawyers and jail authorities. "It is a shame because I have seen the film and she is a magnetic actress," said Ricci.)

Knox is not alone in the dock. Also accused of the murder of Meredith, who was found partially clothed and with her throat slit on the morning of November 2, 2007, is Knox's 24-year-old ex-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito.

The prosecution case is that both Knox and Sollecito were responsible for involving Meredith, 21, a Leeds University student visiting Perugia on a student exchange programme, in a sexual game that led to 'premeditated' murder.

They did this together, it is claimed, with 22-year-old Rudy Guede, from the Ivory Coast, who was found guilty of murder