he latest chapter in Amanda Knox's long legal battle begins Monday in Florence, Italy, with a retrial over the 2007 killing of her British roommate Meredith Kercher.

But Knox, 26, who has expressed concern about returning to a country where she spent four years behind bars, will not be in the court.

She was convicted in 2009 of murdering Kercher, a 21-year old British exchange student who was found stabbed to death in November 2007 in the villa the two young women rented in the central Italian university town of Perugia.

The convictions of Knox and her ex-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, were overturned in 2011 for "lack of evidence."

After her acquittal, Knox returned to her hometown of Seattle where she has been living since.

But Italy's Supreme Court decided last year to retry the case, saying the jury that acquitted Knox didn't consider all the evidence, and that discrepancies in testimony needed to be answered.