Knox, and Sollecito, who were former lovers, were captured on camera together by the British tabloid newspaper The Mirror, apparently just hours after they had been ordered to return to Italy for a retrial over the murder of British student Meredith Kercher in 2007 in Perugia, in the central Italian region of Umbria.

The pair were acquitted of the murder by an Italian appeal court on October 3rd, 2011, after forensic scientists cast doubt on the admissibility of the evidence. Sollecito and Knox were originally sentenced to 26 and 25 years respectively and spent almost four years in jail, with prosecutors claiming that Kercher’s death had been the result of a sex-game that went wrong.

The tabloid newspaper, which published a series of photos of the pair together, claims the couple shared a “passionate embrace” as they toured the city, communicating in Italian along the way. 

“They didn’t seem to have a care in the world as they hugged and kissed during a secret meeting in New York,” writes the paper. 

“‘They just looked like a normal couple who had been with each other a long time. Together with her mum they explored Manhattan and took the subway to get around,’” the newspaper quotes an onlooker as saying.

When the paper approached the pair, 25-year-old Knox refused to comment on whether she would be returning to Italy for the retrial.

Sollecito, 29, told the paper: “We have everything to do now. We have a lot of planning.”

Yesterday it was reported that Sollecito was calling on Facebook users to help raise €370,000 to pay his legal bill at the impending retrial.

In April this year, Amanda Knox published a memoir called ‘Waiting to be heard’ in which she protests her innocence and talks about her incarceration.