Amanda Knox tries to calm US fury over her sentence

Conscious that the public furore in America over her murder conviction and 26-year prison sentence could backfire, Amanda Knox said yesterday that her "rights were respected" during her year-long trial in Perugia and that she "has not stopped believing" in the Italian legal system. She now hopes - and expects - to be freed on appeal.

Knox's decision to speak for the first time since she was sentenced late last Friday for murdering her British housemate Meredith Kercher was timely.

Her conduit to the world outside Capanne jail in Umbria was a visiting Italian MP, Walter Verini, who told the Corriere della Sera that she chose her words carefully, "like a lawyer or a diplomat".

Knox told Verini: "The trial was carried out correctly. My rights were respected, I believe so. I still have faith in Italian justice. I have a crazy urge 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."

American commentators have been little short of abusive of the Italian justice system since 22-year-old Knox and her Italian boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito were found guilty of Kercher's murder.

Maria Cantwell, a senator from the Knox family's home state of Washington, has claimed she detected an "anti-American" bias in the course of the trial and has asked Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to examine whether Knox got a fair hearing. Clinton, in turn, said she was ready to hear any concerns about the case.

But this sort of talk has infuriated the Italians. As Robert Fox, a long-term expert on Italian judicial affairs, wrote for The First Post yesterday, there is nothing "Third World" about Italian jurisprudence and Perugia's courts have a long and distinguished history.

Giuliano Mignini, the prosecutor who proved his case against Knox and her boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito to the judges and lay-judges in the Kercher murder trial, said the American criticism was "unacceptable". He went on: "[The Americans] are saying there's not enough proof to convict these two kids, but how is it possible to argue that? The evidence was scrutinised by 19 judges."

Fox said today: "Knox is very quick and shrewd to try to quash the talk from Washington and Seattle that there is something decrepit, dysfunctional and possibly even corrupt about Italian justice. Her cheerleaders hd not only put her but Hillary Clinton in a very difficult position."

Knox's appeal is unlikely to be heard until the second half of next year. Meanwhile she has been moved from the cell she had been sharing with three other women - a Roma, a Kosovan and a Chinese woman - to share with a 53-year-old American woman from New Orleans convicted of drug smuggling.

"Amanda is happy to be speaking English with a cellmate," said her lawyer, Carlo dalla Vedova. "She has also applied to work in the laundry in the mornings and push on with her degree from Washington State University in the afternoons. She is sad and upset but not depressed." ·