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Ayia Napa rape case teen: “Stay away from Cyprus”

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A 19 year old British woman convicted of lying about being gang raped in Ayia Napa has urged all young girls to stay away from Cyprus.

In an interview with The Sun, she said that Cyprus was a holiday island for her, but now represents a ‘personal hell’.

“If you’re my age and thinking of going to Cyprus this summer, I’d just tell you this — don’t go, just go somewhere else,” she told the British tabloid.

The teen has appealed her conviction and suspended jail sentence and is back in the UK. She has vowed to clear her name. According  to her lawyers grounds for appeal against the public mischief conviction were submitted to the Supreme Court of Cyprus on January 16.

She was found guilty on December 30, 2019 of lying she had been gang raped by 12 Israelis at her hotel in Ayia Napa in July, 2019. She says she was coerced by police in retracting her initial complaint that she was raped.

Michael Polak, from the Justice Abroad group which represented the woman said: “When the trial proceedings are considered dispassionately, it is clear that the teenager did not receive a fair trial before the Famagusta District Court, and that her unfair treatment, and the treatment of her representatives and witness, was in clear contrast to the treatment the prosecution and its witness experienced.

“The conviction of the teenager not only breaches the teenager’s rights under Cypriot law, but it also amounts to a breach of Cyprus’s international obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights and as a member of the European Union.”

In the interview with the Sun, the young woman describes how she was attacked by 12 Israelis who fell on her like a ‘pack of wolves’.

And she said: “I thought if I don’t get out of here now, I’m going to die. I don’t know how many of the 12 raped me. You don’t count, you couldn’t count. They were lining up, excited, talking and shouting in Hebrew. I was trying to fight them off but I just couldn’t. They were like a pack of ­animals — a pack of wolves.”

According to the Sun, the 19 year old had dreamed of a career as an anti-terror cop but, after speaking to a friend who had worked abroad, decided to spend a summer in the sun before her university course.

In the interview, she describes the basement room at the hotel which she shared with three others as “worse than the prison cell I was held in later.”

The woman also shared extracts from her prison diary — which she wrote to cope when she was remanded in custody.

Speaking exclusively to The Sun, she also paid tribute to public support that had raised more than £150,000 to fund her legal fight.

Read more

https://in-cyprus.com/ayia-napa-rape-case-teen-appeals-conviction/

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