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Briton found guilty of making false claim of rape in Ayia Napa UK raises concerns as teenager convicted of lying about Cyprus rape
(about 5 hours later)
Defence lawyers say Cypriot police coerced 19-year-old woman into signing confession Foreign Office says case of 19-year-old who said she was gang-raped is ‘deeply distressing’
A British woman has been found guilty of falsely accusing 12 Israeli men of gang-raping her while she was on holiday in Cyprus. The UK government is to raise concerns with the authorities in Cyprus over the fairness of a trial in which a British teenager was found guilty of lying about being gang-raped.
The 19-year-old has been held on the island since July, first in a prison in Nicosia then in safe houses. She was forced to surrender her passport after she withdrew an accusation that the Israeli tourists raped her in her hotel room in the resort of Ayia Napa in July. A judge ruled on Monday that the 19-year-old wilfully indulged in public mischief in claiming she was raped by a group of Israeli males aged between 15 and 22 while she was on holiday in Ayia Napa in July.
The Briton, who could be named now she has been found guilty, told police she was gang-raped in Ayia Napa by 12 Israelis aged between 15 and 22. The ruling by Michalis Papathanasiou at Famagusta’s district court in Paralimni was immediately and strongly condemned by the defence team and rights groups. They claimed the trial was full of legal irregularities that called the verdict into question and suggested a desire to protect relations with Israel may have influenced the process.
The accused were immediately rounded up and remanded in custody. A Foreign Office spokesman said: “The UK is seriously concerned about the fair trial guarantees in this deeply distressing case and we will be raising the issue with the Cypriot authorities.”
The woman retracted the assertion less than a month after making the claim, in a poorly written confession that her lawyers have since argued she was coerced into signing by Cypriot police. The men were released and have since returned to Israel. The case against the student hinged on a statement retracting her original accusation that she signed while alone in the police station and without a lawyer, following questioning by detectives that was not recorded. She said in court that police forced her to change her story, telling the judge she was “scared for my life”.
Turning from victim to suspect overnight, the woman was arrested on charges of giving a false statement “over an imaginary offence”. “We believe there have been many violations of procedure and the rights of a fair trial,” her defence lawyer, Nicoletta Charalambidou, said. Moments earlier, the defendant and her mother had emerged from the courthouse wearing masks with images of sewn-up lips on them, brought by protesters from the Network Against Violence Against Women (NAVAW), who filled the court and demonstrated outside.
Lawyers for the woman told the court she had only withdrawn her accusations against the men under duress from police. Rights groups have argued she has not had proper legal representation. Charalambidou said: “We are planning to appeal the decision before the supreme court, and if justice fails … take our case to the European court of human rights.”
The court, in the town of Paralimni, ruled on Monday that she was guilty of a charge of causing public mischief. “The judge has been very strict,” Charalambidou told the Guardian. “He has rejected all the witnesses of defence and our repeated requests to expedite the case.”
In graphic testimony during the court case, the woman told the court the alleged incident took place while she was having consensual sex with one of the group. The legal aid group Justice Abroad said the trial had been far from fair because Papathanasiou had refused to consider evidence on whether the defendant had been attacked.
Her family said they would appeal against the decision. “We are not surprised by the result given the frequent refusal during the trial of the judge to consider evidence which supported the fact that the teenager had been raped,” said Michal Polak, a barrister with the group.
The defence lawyer Nicoletta Charalambidou told the Guardian outside the courthouse that they planned to appeal against the verdict. “The judge has been very strict,” she said. “He has rejected all the witnesses of defence and our repeated requests to expedite the case. Our hope is that he will show leniency but we will of course be appealing this judgment.” “Shutting down questioning from our Cypriot advocates and the production of evidence into the trial on a handful of occasions, the judge stridently stated, ‘This is not a rape case, I will not consider whether she was raped or not.’”
She told reporters that the teenager had not had a fair trial. “The decision of the court is respected,” she said. “However, we respectfully disagree with it. The way court proceedings had been conducted violated Cypriot, European community and European human rights law, he claimed.
“We believe there have been many violations of the procedure and the rights of a fair trial of our client have been violated. We are planning to appeal the decision to the supreme court, and if justice fails … we are planning to take our case to the European court of human rights.” Among those called to testify was Dr Marios Matsakis, a prominent forensic pathologist who told the court he was entirely convinced “violence was exercised” during the alleged incident. Scratch marks and bruising on the teenager’s body were “consistent with rape having taken place”, he said.
As she left the court with her mother after the verdict, the woman was mobbed by photographers and TV crews. Both women wore white scarves around their faces depicting lips sewn together – brought by protesters from the Network Against Violence Against Women, who filled the court and demonstrated outside. But Papathanasiou insisted the young woman had fabricated an imaginary offence. “The guilt of the accused is proven. She has confessed,” he pronounced.
For the first time since the case was brought to trial, protesters gathered in heavy rain to deplore what they described as a travesty of justice. The Briton looked visibly stunned, as the judge announced that sentencing would be deferred until 7 January. Her mother burst into tears.
“We are here to defend a 19-year-old girl who has been horribly punished because of political interests,” said Andri Gioakatzi, who works at one of the island’s British bases. “She has had to pay the price of Cyprus’s desire to have good relations with Israel. That is why she has been through this and they let all the Israeli boys go.” The student, who has already spent a month in prison, could be jailed for up to a year and fined in excess of €1,000 (£850). Although released on bail from Nicosia general prison, she has been forced to relinquish her passport, moving from safe house to safe house ever since.
Earlier, the judge, Michalis Papathanasiou, had requested that protesters remove “gagging” masks painted with the image of sewed lips they were wearing in support of the young Briton. Describing the verdict as “absolutely astonishing”, her mother told ITV News: “It would be an absolute injustice if they decide to imprison her for any more days than the four and a half weeks she’s already spent in prison.
“It is extraordinary that the court felt threatened by this piece of cloth and should demand that we remove it, or risk being arrested for contempt,” said Zelia Gregoriou, who teaches gender studies at the University of Cyprus and is a member of the newly created Network Against Violence Against Women. “She is resolute to see justice, she’s absolutely resolute that she’ll fight it, she wants to appeal and I will fully support her 100%, as will her lawyers. So we’ll continue on with appeal and go down that route. If we end up in the European court of human rights, that’s great.”
All too often, she said, reports of rape by tourists holidaying on the Mediterranean island were dismissed by authorities neither trained nor sensitised in matters of gender. The case has made headlines in Cyprus, Israel and the UK because the young woman, who was in the country on a working holiday, reported the gang rape. She told police how she had been having consensual sex with one of the Israelis when the others came in, pinned her down and attacked her.
“This is certainly not the first case of rape in Cyprus but it also takes place at a very significant time when Cyprus is trying to reinvent its relationship with Israel both economically and as a partner in defence,” added Gregoriou. “There is no doubt that this young British woman is a victim of the need to seal that political friendship … She was an essential sacrifice. Nobody was going to be allowed to get in the way.” The men, most of whom were about to enter the army as conscripts, were rounded up and remanded in custody. The woman revoked the criminal complaint weeks later, issuing a statement thatchanged her status from victim to suspect overnight. The alleged assailants were allowed to return home the next day.
The woman’s family set up a crowdfunding page asking for money for legal costs, which has raised more than £52,000. In an online post last week, they wrote: “We remain hopeful that she will be allowed to go home on 30th and that justice will be served.” The defence team later described the confession, extracted after eight hours of police questioning, as the product of coercion. They argued its poor English and grammar made clear that the “highly educated” teenager had not written it.
Sentencing is scheduled for 7 January. Ritsa Pekri, defending, asked the judge on Monday to mitigate her sentence, saying the young woman suffered from psychological problems and was taking antidepressants.
The judge said the defendant admitted to investigators she had lied and apologised, saying she made up the claims because she was “ashamed” after finding out that some of the Israelis had filmed her having sex on their mobile phones. With its frequent adjournments and unexpected twists, rights groups have described the trial as a travesty of justice. Senior officials in Cyprus’s criminal justice system have also voiced objections, saying privately that the island’s attorney general should have dismissed court proceedings.
The defence lawyer Ritsa Pekri asked the court to mitigate her sentence, saying she regretted her actions and did what she did only because she was under strong psychological pressure. Local protesters gathered at the court in a display of solidarity with the defendant for the first time on Monday. Holding banners aloft in the rain, the women, young and old, accused the Cypriot authorities of submitting to a deeply conservative society, one in which reports of rape are all too often ignored.
She could be sent to jail for a year or fined more than €1,000 (£854). They said court officials and police were neither trained nor sensitised in matters of gender, and alleged that national interests had influenced the verdict.
Michael Polak, a lawyer from the Justice Abroad group, which is assisting the woman, said: “We are not surprised by the result, given the frequent refusal during the trial of the judge to consider evidence which supported the fact that the teenager had been raped. “We are here to defend a 19-year-old girl who has been horribly punished because of political interests,” said Andri Gioakatzi, who works in one of the sovereign UK base areas in the former British colony. “She has had to pay the price of Cyprus’s desire to have good relations with Israel. That is why she has been through this and they let all the Israeli boys go.”
“Shutting down questioning from our Cypriot advocates and the production of evidence into the trial on a handful of occasions the judge stridently stated ‘this is not a rape case, I will not consider whether she was raped or not’. Filing into the packed courtroom for the morning hearing, the protesters angered assembled police and the judge by donning masks with the image of sewn-up lips. The masks symbolised the enforced silence women were often subjected to when they encountered violence, activists said. Papathanasiou ordered them to uncover their faces or face arrest for contempt of court.
“We have found it incredibly difficult to follow this logic given that an essential element of the offence is for there to be a ‘false statement concerning an imaginary offence’ and therefore, clearly if the teenager was raped, she cannot be guilty. “It is extraordinary that the court felt threatened by this piece of cloth and should demand that we remove it,” said Zelia Gregoriou, who teaches gender studies at the University of Cyprus and is a member of the newly created NAVAW.
“This will form a ground of appeal before the supreme court of Cyprus along with a number of other failings in the trial process which resulted in the teenager not receiving a fair trial before the district court as guaranteed by Cypriot law as well as both European community law and European human rights law.” “This is certainly not the first case of rape in Cyprus and certainly not the first time that a rape complaint is ignored, but it also takes place at a very significant time when Cyprus is trying to reinvent its relationship with Israel both economically and as a partner in defence.”
As the race to tap gas deposits in the eastern Mediterranean has intensified in recent years, the partitioned island’s internationally recognised Greek Cypriot government has worked hard to forge ever better ties with Israel.
The protesters said Monday’s verdict also spoke of the desire of authorities to “look good” at a time when Cyprus’s police force is facing unprecedented scrutiny for a string of perceived failures, including in detecting a serial killer who has since admitted killing seven women and girls on the island.
“There is no doubt that this young British woman is a victim of the need to seal that political friendship,” said Gregoriou. “She was an essential sacrifice. We have come to help her belatedly, but help her we will.”