American student Amanda Knox, on trial here with her ex boyfriend for the murder of British student Meredith Kercher, is prepared to talk freely when she takes the witness stand in her defence on Friday.
Knox's lawyer Luciano Ghirga told reporters on Thursday the 21-year-old student ''planned to answer any questions she's asked'' when she goes on the stand on Friday and Saturday.
Knox and her Italian former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, 25, are on trial for the murder, on charges of sexual violence as well as for simulating a crime to make it look like an intruder had broken into the house.
The American must also answer charges of falsehood for having accused Perugia-based musician Patrick Lumumba of being the murderer.
Prosecutors have have cleared Lumumba of any involvement in the case and he is suing for damages.
Exchange student Kercher, 22, was found semi-naked and with her throat slit on November 2, 2007 in the house she shared in Perugia with Seattle-born Knox and two Italian women.
A third defendant, Ivory Coast national Rudy Guede, 21, was sentenced to 30 years for sexually assaulting and murdering the British exchange student at a separate trial last October.
Prosecutor Giuliano Mignini has told the court that Kercher, who was found semi-naked in her bedroom with her throat slashed on November 2, 2007 was killed when Guede, Knox and Sollecito tried to force her to participate in ''a perverse group sex game''.
In Mignini's reconstruction of events, Sollecito and Guede held Kercher's arms while Knox slashed her throat with a kitchen knife.
The public prosecutor said Guede had also tried to rape Kercher.
But Guede's lawyers claim that the crime was carried out by Knox and Sollecito alone.
Guede has always admitted to being in the house on the night of the murder but says he was in the bathroom when Kercher was murdered.
The defendants deny wrongdoing and their defence teams claim their clients were not in the house and that the crime was committed by a single attacker.
Knox is taking the stand at the request of her lawyer and of Lumumba's attorney, who is involved in the trial as a civil plaintiff.
As Knox prepared to take the stand, an article in the New York Times by Pulitzer-winning author Timothy Egan took issue with prosecutor Giuliano Mignini's handling of the case, which has drawn widespread coverage here and abroad.
In an article published on Thursday, An Innocent Abroad, Egan casts doubt on the strength of the case and the prosecution's motives.
''The case against Knox has so many holes in it, and is so tied to the career of a powerful Italian prosecutor who is under indictment for professional misconduct, that any fair-minded jury would have thrown it out months ago,'' says the author, who is a Seattle resident.
A number of other US and British papers have questioned the prosecutor's case.
