The 31-year-old and her then boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, were initially charged with the brutal murder and sexual assault of Kercher, who was found semi-naked with her throat slashed.

Kercher was a Leeds University European Studies student on a one-year exchange course in Umbria, and was just 21 years old when she was murdered.

Knox was arrested in 2007 after she told police she “vaguely remembered” another man breaking into her home and murdering her housemate.

Police used this as evidence to arrest bar owner Patrick Lumumba in connection with the murder, but he was later released without charge.

Knox was also found guilty by an Italian court of making a malicious accusation, by allegedly suggesting Lumumba was guilty of the murder.

She spent almost four years in custody before her convictions for murder and sexual assault were overturned and she was released and sent back to the US.

Local man Rudy Guede was found guilty of Kercher’s murder in October 2008, after his fingerprints were found at the crime scene.

Guede is currently serving a 30-year sentence.

Now, Knox will receive around AUD $30,000 in damages and expenses.

“The Court took the view that the Italian Government had not succeeded in showing that the restriction of Ms Knox’s access to a lawyer, at the police interview of November 6, 2007 at 5:45 am - when there was a criminal charge against her - had not irreparably undermined the fairness of the proceedings as a whole,” a statement read.

“Ms Knox had been particularly vulnerable, being a foreign young woman, 20 at the time, not having been in Italy for very long and not being fluent in Italian.”

As well as concluding authorities had twice violated her right to a fair trial, the ECHR also found they had failed to investigate her complaints she had been subjected to degrading treatment, including being slapped on the head and deprived of sleep.

“I was interrogated for 53 hours over five days, without a lawyer, in a language I understood maybe as well as a 10 year old,” she said in a statement following the ruling.

“When I told police I had no idea who had killed Meredith I was slapped in the back of the head and told to ‘remember’.”

The court did not, however, uphold Knox’s complaint of ill-treatment due to lack of evidence.

“There was insufficient evidence to conclude that Ms Knox had actually sustained the inhuman or degrading treatment of which she had complained,” it said in the statement.

Knox’s Italian lawyer Carlo Dalla Vedova said:

“This was the biggest miscarriage of Italian justice in the last 50 years.

“A massive damage was done to this girl.

“It is impossible to compensate Amanda for four years in prison for a mistake. There will be no amount.

“We are not looking for compensation of damages. We are doing this on principal.”

Knox has always denied any involvement in Kercher’s murder.