she said loved Meredith - and I didn't kill her'

A suspect in the murder of Meredith Kercher spoke from her prison cell today, insisting she was not the killer.

Amanda Knox said that although she had "an exaggerated lifestyle" she was not involved in the death.

In her first interview since her arrest, she also said she fears she could have been killed if she had been in the house that night.

Miss Kercher was found semi-naked with her throat slashed on 2 November in the bedroom of the flat she shared with Knox in Perugia.

In a written response to questions from journalists, the American student said: "Meredith was such a sweet and sensible girl. It's not true that we were always arguing. I liked living with her.

"We were friends even if we had our own lives. She was a gentle girl who loved life. It hurts me to think about what happened to her. I often think that I could be dead if I had been at the house that night."

She added: "I am just a 20-year-old girl who came to Perugia to learn Italian after having studied Japanese. I have had boyfriends like others my age and I remember them all. Some were important to me, others not. In Italy I got drunk on freedom, sometimes exaggerating, getting involved in things that today I know are wrong.

"It's all down to my youthfulness and my love for life. I don't have a dark side or an evil side to my personality."

Knox is in custody with her boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, 24, on suspicion of murdering Kercher. She was due to be questioned today by Perugia's public prosecutor and a judge but her lawyer Luciano Ghirga was unable to attend the meeting and it has been postponed until Monday.

Knox said: "I will answer the judge's questions. I will try to explain the contradictions that have emerged. More than anything above all I hope to be at last believed."

Since her arrest on 6 November, Knox has changed her story several times. First she said she was not at the house, then she said she was and that she remembered another suspect, Diya Lumumba, killing Miss Kercher, then she was not at the house but at her boyfriend's.

She also suggested that Sollecito may have raped and murdered Meredith and then returned to his flat while she slept and placed the murder weapon in her hands to get her fingerprints on it.

Police remain convinced she was at the scene.