Former student Raffaele ­Sollecito has been picked up by police close to the Austrian border, the day after he was convicted for a second time of the murder of British student Meredith Kercher.

Sollecito, 29, handed over his passport yesterday at an Italian police station less than 10km from the country's border amid fears he would attempt to escape following Thursday night's verdict by a court in Florence. It followed a re-trial for the November 2007 ­killing in Perugia.

His lawyer claimed he had met officers in the northern town of Udine voluntarily and he is expected to appeal the 25-year jail sentence, which he has now been handed twice. He left the hearing suffering from stress.

Sollecito's former girlfriend, 26-year-old Amanda Knox, was almost 6000 miles away yesterday in her home city of Seattle in the US, protesting her innocence in TV interviews after the pair were handed down the guilty verdicts.

She pledged that she would only be forced back to Italy to serve her 28 years and six month jail sentence "kicking and screaming".

She added: "I'm going to fight this until the very end. And it's not right, and it's not fair and I'm going to do everything that I can. I'm going to fight this to the very end."

Knox said the verdict had hit her like a train. She added: "I didn't expect this to happen. They found me innocent before."

Ms Kercher, 21, of Coulsden, Surrey, was found stabbed to death in an apartment the two young women shared in Perugia, central Italy, where they were studying.

Knox has remained in Seattle since being released from prison in 2011 after an appeal overturned an original conviction and freed her and Sollecito after four years in custody.

Neither her sentence nor the 25-year term handed to Sollecito will have to be served pending further appeals, and a prolonged legal fight is now in prospect.

Knox has sent a letter to Ms Kercher's family, which they say they will refuse to read. She added: "I just want them to know that I really understand that this is incredibly difficult, that they've also been on this never-ending thing and, when the case has been messed up so much, like, a verdict is no longer consolation for them."

Asked about Sollecito, Knox said: "He is vulnerable, and I don't know what I would do if they imprisoned him. It's maddening."

The case, which has hit the headlines around the world, has divided opinion internationally.

Knox has been widely vilified in Italy but in her home country is commonly seen as the victim of a faulty justice system and the prospect of an emotionally fraught battle to extradite the student is now on the horizon.

Investigators quickly pointed to Knox and Sollecito as suspects, building a narrative that the two killed Kercher in a sex game gone awry. Both were convicted in 2009 and spent four years in prison.

They were cleared on appeal, but Italy's highest court last year quashed that verdict due to "inconsistencies" and ordered a repeat of the appeal trial. It was this trial that concluded on Thursday.

From the start, the case has been played out as much in the media as in court, with bloggers and journalists sifting through evidence and weighing in for or against Knox and Sollecito.

Knox's lawyers have made stinging criticisms of police procedures, the handling of evidence from the crime scene and the conduct of the prosecution.

They argued that only Ivory Coast-born Rudy Guede, who was jailed in 2008 for killing Ms Kercher, was responsible for the murder and sexual assault.