Final twist of Meredith Kercher murder saga as Amanda Knox breaks down in tears as her slander conviction is upheld and ex Raffaele Sollecito reveals why

Amanda Knox broke down in tears after her conviction of slandering her former boss was upheld by Italy's highest court.

Knox was found guilty of slander after she wrongly accused her then-boss Patrick Lumumba of murdering her British flatmate Meredith Kercher in 2007.

The American defendant, who was convicted and acquitted in flip-flop verdicts in Kercher's murder, on Thursday lost her appeal to have the slander charge overturned, leaving her with a permanent criminal record in Italy.

Knox, who did not attend court but followed the hearing from the US, shared a video of herself weeping after the conviction was upheld, saying it was 'disappointing' that she will have a 'criminal record forever for something I didn't do'.

But her ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, who was also convicted and acquitted in Kercher's brutal killing, has claimed that the slander conviction ruling appears to be the court taking 'revenge' on Knox having her murder conviction overturned.

'It could be a comedy show or something,' he told NewsNation's Ashleigh Banfield. 'Everything was made up... I don't understand this conviction. I think it's more political than anything else.'

Sollecito added that he 'does not trust the Italian judicial system' at all and hasn't throughout the course of the 17-year legal saga.

An appeals court in Florence last year handed Knox a three-year sentence for wrongly accusing Congolese bar owner Lumumba of killing Kercher in the Italian city of Perugia in 2007.

Knox, 37, served four years in jail for killing Kercher before the conviction was annulled in 2015. She had continued the legal battle with the aim of clearing her name of all criminal wrongdoing. 

'I've just been found guilty yet again of a crime I didn't commit,' Knox wrote on X Thursday, after learning that her conviction had been upheld. 

'And I was just awarded the Innocence Network Impact Award, 'created to honor an exonerated person who raises awareness of wrongful convictions, policy issues, or assists others post-release'.'

Speaking recently on her 'Labyrinths' podcast, an emotional Knox said: 'I hate the fact that I have to live with consequences for a crime I did not commit.' 

She said consequences included difficulties in obtaining visas to some countries because of a criminal conviction. Knox also said she was a 'little bit astonished' because she had 'higher hopes of the court in Rome'.

'But there's nothing else I can do,' she said through her tears. 'It's really disappointing because there's nothing else I can do.'

She also alleged that the 'irony is that while being wrongly convicted of slander, I'm the most slandered person in this whole saga. The police, prosecutor, media, courts, and the killer Rudy Guede, have all slandered me to no end.'

Sollecito, who says he is still in contact with Knox today, told Banfield that does not 'trust' the court's ruling after the roller-coaster flip-flopping case.

'They decided to give a second try to the Amanda Knox case, the slander case in particular, and they themselves between judges decided to close again with the definitive conviction,' he said. 'I don't know why they made this decision. I know the evidence and I know everything was made up.'

He further alleged that there was 'no reason me or Amanda ever had the idea to do something wrong against Meredith, so I don't understand this conviction'. 

The slander conviction against Knox had survived multiple appeals, and Knox was reconvicted on the charge in June after the European court ruling cleared the way for a new trial.

Her defense team says she accused Lumumba, a Congolese man who employed her at a bar in the central Italian university town of Perugia, during a long night of questioning and under pressure from police, who they said fed her false information. 

The European Court of Human Rights found that the police deprived her of a lawyer and provided a translator who acted more as a mediator.

Judge Monica Boni read the verdict aloud in a courtroom that was empty except for a few reporters and guards. The lawyers for both Knox and Lumumba  had gone home during deliberations.

Reached by telephone, Lumumba said he was satisfied with the verdict. 'Amanda was wrong. This verdict has to accompany her for the rest of her life,' he said.

Knox's lawyer, Carlo Dalla Vedova, expressed surprise at the court's decision. 

'We are incredulous,' Dalla Vedova told reporters in the courthouse by phone. 'This is totally unexpected in our eyes, and totally unjust for Amanda.'

Knox was a 20-year-old student in Perugia when Kercher was found stabbed to death on November 2, 2007, in her bedroom in the apartment they shared with two Italian women.

The case made global headlines as suspicion quickly fell on Knox and Sollecito, her boyfriend of just days. But another man, Rudy Hermann Guede, from the Ivory Coast, was eventually convicted of murder after his DNA was found at the crime scene. 

Guede was freed in 2021, after serving most of his 16-year sentence.

The European court ordered Italy to pay Knox damages for the police failures, noting she was particularly vulnerable as a foreign student not fluent in Italian.

Italy's high court ordered the new slander trial based on that ruling. It threw out two signed statements drafted by police falsely accusing Lumumba in the murder, and directed the appellate court that the only evidence it could consider was a hand-written letter she later wrote in English attempting to walk back the accusation.

However, the appellate court in its reasoning said that the four-page memo supported a slander finding.

On the basis of Knox's statements, Lumumba was brought in for questioning, despite having an ironclad alibi. His business suffered, and he eventually moved to Poland with his Polish wife.

Arriving at court, he underlined that Knox 'has never apologized to me.'

Knox returned to the United States in 2011, after being freed by an appeals court in Perugia, and has established herself as a global campaigner for the wrongly convicted. 

She has a podcast with her husband and has a new memoir coming out titled, 'Free: My Search for Meaning.'