By Silvia Ognibene

FLORENCE, Italy (Reuters) -American Amanda Knox returned to court in Italy on Wednesday as she sought to overturn a conviction for slander, the last outstanding case against her following the notorious killing of a British student in 2007.

“I hope to clear my name once and for all of the false charges against me,” Knox said this week on X.

Holding hands with her husband Christopher Robinson, Knox, 36, made no comment to journalists and camera crews when she arrived at the court. The hearing began at around 09:50 a.m. (0750 GMT) and a verdict was expected later in the day.

Italy’s top court in 2015 annulled Knox’s conviction for the murder of her British flatmate Meredith Kercher in the city of Perugia, capping nearly a decade of courtroom drama during which she had twice been found guilty.

The brutal stabbing of 21-year-old Kercher and multiple trials provided fodder for tabloids on both sides of the Atlantic and inspired books and films.

Knox – who spent four years in jail in Italy and was tried and eventually cleared along with her Italian former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito – is facing a retrial over a slander conviction.

Knox was given a three-year sentence for wrongly accusing Congolese bar owner Patrick Lumumba of killing Kercher. The sentence had no practical impact as it was covered by the time Knox spent in jail.

Lumumba was held for two weeks in 2007 before he was freed. Knox said she named him while under duress when she was being questioned by police.

“When Patrick was accused by Amanda, he became known everywhere as the monster of Perugia,” Lumumba’s lawyer Carlo Pacelli told reporters on Wednesday, saying that the conviction should be upheld. Lumumba was not in court.

The European Court of Human Rights ruled in 2019 that there had been procedural errors during Knox’s questioning and Italy’s highest court last year ordered a retrial in the slander case.

Rudy Guede, originally from the Ivory Coast, was sentenced to 16 years in jail for the killing of Kercher, in a ruling that said he acted with unnamed other culprits. He was granted early release in 2021.

(Writing by Keith Weir, editing by Alexandra Hudson and Crispian Balmer)