Amanda Knox launches fresh appeal in slander case in Italy

Amanda Knox has launched a fresh appeal against her conviction for slander in connection with a 2007 murder that gripped the world's attention.

Knox, 37, has officially filed an appeal to overturn her defamation conviction and secure a full acquittal, her lawyers said on Monday. The case will now go back to Italy's highest court, the Supreme Court of Cassation in Rome.

Almost 10 years after Knox was acquitted of the murder of 21-year-old British student Meredith Kercher in the central Italian city of Perugia, an appeals court in Florence sentenced her to three years in prison in June this year for falsely implicating a local barman in the case.

Knox has not had to serve that sentence as she spent four years in prison in Italy following her initial murder conviction, which was overturned in 2011.

Knox now lives on the west coast of the United States. She is married and has two children.

In the main proceedings, the American was twice found guilty of murdering Kercher, her former roommate. In the final instance, however, she was granted a full acquittal in 2015.

The murder has still not been solved. It has been the subject of a profusion of books, films and TV shows.

Kercher's murder in Perugia in central Italy in November 2007 has been making headlines ever since.

The young British woman, who was in Perugia on a semester abroad, was found dead in the apartment she shared with three other young women, among them Amanda Knox.

A 20-year-old man whose fingerprints were found at the scene was convicted of being an accessory to murder. He was released after serving 13 years of his sentence.