A 19 year old British woman under arrest for falsely claiming she was gang raped at her Ayia Napa Hotel by 12 Israelis is claiming she was pressured by police into signing a confession, the Sun reports.
It said that the woman claims the police dictated her statement and threatened to arrest her friends for conspiracy if she did not sign it.
The woman had initially filed a complaint that she had been gang raped by 12 Israeli youths at a hotel in Ayia Napa.
The 12 youths were arrested and remanded in custody – five were released five days later and the other seven after spending some 10 days in custody after police found nothing incriminating against them
They have all returned to Israel.
The woman was then arrested and is currently under an eight day remand. She is due in court on Wednesday where she faces charges of public mischief for making false allegations
The teenager claims officers dictated a statement in which she admitted faking allegations — and she reluctantly signed only because she was exhausted after eight hours at the police station.
The Sun said that British barrister Michael Polak, backed by an ex-Foreign Office diplomat and former Detective Superintendent David Swindle, have taken up the fight to clear her name.
Polak, of campaign group Justice Abroad, told The Sun: “The confession was obtained under oppression given the threats made. She was not cautioned and was not given access to a lawyer as was her right under the European Convention on Human rights.
“Further, the teenager was not told she could leave the police station nor given the option of leaving at any point.
“It is also understood that unfortunately none of the proceedings at the Cypriot police station were recorded.”
According to the British tabloid, the girl sent a frantic message to friends that broke off mid-sentence.
According to the Sun, the British woman had told police she was having a holiday fling with one of the Israelis and had twice had sex with him previously.
On the night of the alleged attack, she said they went to his shared room.
A number of other Israelis are understood to have been in the room at the time but it is uncertain how many were there when the pair arrived.
The couple had sex but the British teenager said her partner became violent. She wept and begged him to stop.
She claimed he refused, then invited his friends to join in. She told police she finally fled naked and found her friends. the newspaper reports.
According to the Sun the woman went to the police voluntarily after police asked for a second statement but there found herself accused of inventing the attack.
It adds that the woman said she had held out against signing the dictated confession but eventually gave in. She was charged at 2.30 am.
Police said that she had told them she had had consensual sex but became upset when she found out that she had been filmed without consent.
A grainy sex recording from the night of the alleged attack was also leaked to the Israeli media.
https://in-cyprus.com/british-woman-to-stand-trial-on-august-7-for-making-false-rape-claim-against-israeli-youths/
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