Europe's human rights court on Thursday ordered Italy to pay Amanda Knox financial damages for police failure to provide legal assistance and a translator during a long night of questioning following the 2007 murder of her British roommate, but the court said there was insufficient evidence to support claims of psychological and physical mistreatment by police.

The European Court of Human Rights Court in Strasbourg, France, said in its ruling that Italy hadn't succeeded in proving "the restriction of Ms. Knox's access to a lawyer ... had not irreparably undermined the fairness of the proceedings as a whole." It ordered damages that Italy must pay Knox 18,400 euros ($27,200 Cdn) in damages, costs and expenses.

"Ms. Knox had been particularly vulnerable, being a foreign young woman, 20 at the time, not having been in Italy for very long and not being fluent in Italian," the court noted.

After more than seven years of legal battles and flip-flop decisions, Knox, now 31, was definitively acquitted of Meredith Kercher's murder by Italy's highest court in March 2015, but a damaging conviction for falsely accusing a Congolese bar owner of the murder was confirmed, leaving a cloud over her acquittal.

Knox, who is now 31 and lives in Seattle, wrote in her blog that the ruling means "my slander conviction was unjust."

"I never should have been charged, much less convicted, of slander," she wrote.

It was during questioning in the wee hours of Nov. 6, 2007, that Knox accused Patrick Lumumba, the owner of a bar where she sometimes worked, of the murder. Knox's defence had long claimed that the accusation was coerced.

The court noted she had quickly and repeatedly retracted the statement. It said that despite her lawyer's request, there was never an investigation to clarify the circumstances of `'the incriminating statements."

It also said the interpreter assigned to her acted more as a "mediator, and taking on a motherly attitude which was not called for in the circumstances," and that Knox's complaints about the inappropriate conduct were never examined in Italian courts.

The human rights court, however, said there was not enough evidence to conclude Knox had "sustained the inhuman or degrading treatment," she claimed. Knox said she had been slapped twice on the side of the head by police, while also being subjected to pressure, threats of imprisonment and shouting.

Knox's defence lawyer, Carlo Dalla Vedova, said the decision "is not a big surprise for me because the Supreme Court already said there were many mistakes. That is one of the reasons that invited us to tell Amanda to go to Strasbourg."

"For me this is a certification of a mistake, probably the biggest legal mistake in the last years in Italy, also because the attention that this case has had," Dalla Vedova said. He said he was considering whether to challenge the standing conviction for malicious false accusations.

The sensational murder of 21-year-old Kercher attracted global attention, especially after suspicion fell on Knox, and Knox's then Italian boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito. Kercher was found nude under a blanket, with her throat slit. While Knox and her former boyfriend were initially convicted in Kercher's slaying and handed hefty sentences, both were eventually acquitted.

An Ivorian man, Rudu Guede, is serving a 16-year sentence for the murder.

The lawyer for the Kerchers, Francesco Maresca, said the family remained bitter that years of court decisions "resulted only in the conviction of Rudy Guede."

Prosecutors argued throughout the trials that the murder could not have been the work of a single perpetrator.

Sollecito sought 500,000 euros (over $758,000) for wrongful imprisonment — the maximum allowed under Italian law — but was denied because the court said he had contributed by making contradictory statements during the investigation.

Dalla Vedova said Knox let the deadline for wrongful imprisonment filing lapse without seeking compensation, instead focusing on the human rights issue.

"It is impossible to compensate Amanda for four years in prison for a mistake," he said. "There will be no amount. We are not looking for compensation of damages. We are doing this on principal."