• Published

**The sister of Meredith Kercher has criticised a solo comedy show at the Edinburgh Festival by Amanda Knox, who was convicted and later acquitted of murdering her British roommate in Italy in 2007. **

The festival's Fringe website says Knox's show, Cartwheel, is about motherhood and asks how she will explain what happened in Perugia to her daughter.

Stephanie Kercher, addressing Knox directly on BBC Breakfast, said: "What I would say [to Knox] is to think about the family here, think about her friends and to turn the tables if it was your sister that this had happened to, because I know you have a sister as well."

Knox's spokesperson said the show honours Kercher's memory.

Knox told the Telegraph newspaper, external last week: "I don't joke about Meredith's death. I joke a lot about how I was vilified, but I don't joke about her murder."

Asked if Meredith Kercher would have found her comedy funny, she added: "Yeah, I think so. I mean, it is funny!".

Responding to that suggestion, Stephanie Kercher told the BBC: "Meredith absolutely wouldn't find these topics of any comedy value."

She said: "Our family's pain is immense. I can't explain to you how much pain our family have been through, and also we're talking two decades later now, this pain."

A petition against the show, set up by a friend of Meredith, has been signed by just over 1,500 people, and says the show disrespects her memory and also risks normalising violence against women by making light of such a harrowing event.

Referencing the petition, Stephanie Kercher told BBC Breakfast: "It's not just our family that feels this pain, and I do think this is something that needs to be looked at, because it sets a precedent for anyone else to do a show like this."

She urged Prime Minister Andy Burnham to explore the issue and said she would like to meet him.

"I think that if it was a generic theme, as many comedy shows are, even when they're pushing the boundaries, it would be different," she added.

"Because this is associated with an individual case and individual person, I think that's where the worry lies here for me, because who else is this going to then open up this opportunity for."

The venue for the show next week, the Gilded Balloon Teviot, said Edinburgh Festival Fringe provides a platform for a wide range of voices in line with the commitment to freedom of expression.

Knox, from Seattle in the US, and Meredith Kercher, from Surrey in the UK, were both language exchange students sharing a house in the university town of Perugia.

Alongside her then-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, Knox was arrested on suspicion of murdering Kercher, 21, who was found dead in their house. Her throat had been cut and she had been sexually assaulted.

After being found guilty, Knox served four years in an Italian prison before she and Sollecito were acquitted through an appeal. She returned home to the US in 2011.

A retrial in 2014 reinstated Knox and Sollecito's convictions but Italy's top appeals court finally overturned their convictions in 2015.

Ivory Coast-born Rudy Guede served a 16-year sentence for Kercher's murder after his fingerprints were found at the scene.

The court ruled that he did not act alone, but after Knox and Sollecito were acquitted no other accomplices were convicted.