AMANDA Knox, who is facing a retrial over the killing of Coulsdon student Meredith Kercher, has protested her innocence in a US TV interview.
The 25-year-old student, from Seattle, was initially found guilty of the murder of Meredith, whose body was found in the flat she shared with Ms Knox in Perugia, Italy, in November 2007.
But in 2011, her conviction – along with that of her former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito – was overturned by an Italian appeal court.
Those acquittals were, themselves, last month overturned and a retrial has been ordered but Ms Knox used the interview broadcast on ABC News on Tuesday to claim her innocence.
She said: "I was in the courtroom when they were calling me 'devil'.
"It's one thing to be called certain things in the media and then it's another thing to be sitting in a courtroom, fighting for your life, while people are calling you a devil.
"For all intents and purposes, I was a murderer - whether I was or not. And I had to live with the idea that that would be my life."
The interview is timed to coincide with the release of Ms Knox's autobiography, for which she was reportedly paid more than $4m.
In the book, she maintains that on the night of Ms Kercher's death she was at Sollecito's flat smoking marijuana and watching a movie.
The Italian courts cannot compel Knox to return for the retrial but they could request her extradition - at which point it would be up to the US authorities to determine whether she is ordered back to Italy or not.
Meredith, 21, was on an exchange trip to Perugia at the time of her death.
