Amanda Knox: "My rights were respected"

ROME — Amanda Knox, the American convicted of murdering her British housemate in Italy two years ago, feels her "rights were respected" in the trial, a leading Italian daily reported Wednesday.

"My rights were respected, I believe so," Knox told a lawmaker visiting her in prison just days after the verdict was announced early Saturday, the Corriere della Sera reported.

"The trial was carried out correctly," she told Walter Verini of the centre-left Democratic Party after a diplomatic furore sparked by a senator from Knox's home state of Washington, who charged that Italy's judicial system is "flawed."

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stepped into the fray on Sunday, saying in a television interview that she would meet with Senator Maria Cantwell "or anyone who has a concern" over Knox's trial and conviction.

Clinton's spokesman said the next day that the US government had no "indications... that Italian law was not followed."

Knox, 22, was convicted last week by two judges and six Italian jurors in Perugia, central Italy, of murdering British exchange student Meredith Kercher in the cottage the two young women shared in the centuries-old university town.

She was sentenced to 26 years in jail, while co-defendant Raffaele Sollecito, her boyfriend at the time of the murder, received a sentence of 25 years.

Knox told Verini: "I still have faith in Italian justice. I have a huge desire to be free but there is only one path I have chosen for leaving here, and that is the appeal that my lawyers are preparing."

The native of Seattle, Washington, who has already spent two years behind bars, chose her words carefully, like a lawyer or a diplomat, the report said.

"I thought I would be home for Christmas, but instead I have to wait," she said.

Prosecutors presented DNA and other forensic evidence against Knox, Sollecito and a third person, Rudy Guede of Ivory Coast, who was convicted separately after opting for a "fast-track" trial in exchange for clemency.

The prosecution alleged that the three young people were high on drugs when they tried to engage Kercher, 21, in a sex game that turned violent, leaving her dead with stab wounds to the neck.