Ahead of a key ruling by Italy's top court on Friday, Amanda Knox's ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito has claimed on Facebook that he had no part in the 2007 murder of Meredith Kercher.
"This is a birthday full of hope for a better future, for me and for all the innocent people crying out for justice, for all those forced to live a nightmare," Sollecito wrote in a post to mark his 31st birthday.
Italy's Supreme Court is due to decide on Friday whether or not to uphold the guilty verdicts handed to Knox and Sollecito by a Florence appeals court last January for Kercher's brutal murder on 1 November 2007.
Sollecito has said he will be present in court on Friday. He had his passport confiscated and faces immediate imprisonment if his conviction is upheld.
If the Supreme Court finds Knox guilty of Kercher's murder she could be extradited from the United States, where she returned in 2011 after being acquitted in an earlier appeal.
A Florence appeals court last January convicted Knox and Sollecito of Kercher's murder and sentenced them to serve 28 years and six months and 25 years in prison respectively.
The appeals court found the pair guilty on the basis of DNA evidence it said linked them to the murder scene, but the defence claims this evidence was flawed. Knox and Sollecito deny they killed Kercher.
Kercher, a British university student was found in a pool of blood in her bedroom, half-naked and with her throat slashed. She had been stabbed 47 times in what prosecutors initially claimed was a satanic rite.
Ivory Coast-born drifter Rudy Guede is serving a 16-year sentence for Kercher's murder after being jailed in 2008. At his fast-track trial the judge concluded that he had not acted alone.
