Her comments came a day after being reconvicted of slandering a Perugia bar owner in the 2007 murder of Meredith Kercher.

“I love this country and I hope that one day we will be really able to understand one another.

“I’m trying,” said the 36-year-old writer and justice reform campaigner, who served four years in prison after being convicted of murdering her British housemate before eventually being acquitted with her ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito.

On her re-sentencing to three years, time already served, for initially fingering her friend the Congo-born bar owner Patrick Lumumba, Knox told Sky TG24 that “this verdict is not right and is not correct”.

She said that she and her legal team would be awaiting the written explanation of the ruling, but they would “certainly” appeal to the supreme Court of Cassation.

“I haven’t’ slept, I’m really disappointed,” she went on, “I feel sad, but I’m determined.

“I have nothing to hide and I’ll never stop telling the truth.

“I didn’t slander Patrick, I didn’t kill my friend [Meredith]. I will return here every time I have to in order to fight this injustice.”

Italy was condemned by the European Court of Human Rights for violating Knox’s defence rights with allegedly violent questioning that resulted in the initial guilty verdict.

That sentence made this week’s appeal trial possible.

Knox said that experience was “the worst experience of my life”.

She said, “they made me think I was mad”.

But after being “unjustly accused for 17 years” and becoming “the most hated girl in the world”, she said she had “survived”.

Knox added she would raise her two young children in such a way as to show them “my strength”.

The American said she was still resentful towards the tabloid treatment of her as “Foxy Knoxy” and the delving into allegedly salacious details of her life.

She also said that, as a campaigner for defendants’ rights, she was aware that there have been some 30,000 victims of miscarriages of justice in Italy in the last 30 years.

“My message to those who are unjustly incarcerated is: you are not alone,” said Knox.

“There are very tough days, but there are people who want to help you,” she concluded.

Knox and Sollecito were arrested five days after Kercher’s semi-naked and brutalised body was found on November 1, 2007.

They were convicted by a court of first instance, but this conviction was subsequently overturned.

The appeal sentence was then thrown out by the Court of Cassation, Italy’s supreme court, which ordered a new trial on appeal leading to their re-conviction in 2014.

Knox and Sollecito were eventually acquitted definitively by the supreme court the following year.

Rudy Guede, an Ivorian, was convicted and sentenced to 16 years for the murder.

He was released from prison in November 2021 after serving 13 years.

In February, a court ordered him to be placed under special surveillance after he was found guilty of beating his ex-girlfriend.

Francesco Maresca, the lawyer representing the Kercher family, said Wednesday’s ruling showed “shadows continue to hang over the crime”.

ANSA