British colonial forces raped a 15-year-old girl and tortured civilian detainees with beatings and mock hangings during the EOKA uprising in the 1950s, the MailOnline says citing papers lodged at the High Court.
It said the claims were made in eyewitness reports by 31 elderly men and two women who are suing the British government for human rights abuses.
The evidence comes after The Mail on Sunday revealed in April that senior British officers had seen evidence of beatings, torture and murder by soldiers during the British colonial rule and that their complaints had been covered up by the authorities.
The British Government denies any wrongdoing and has appealed against a High Court ruling that the case can be heard in the UK.
Lawyers representing the Cypriots say they have irrefutable evidence, including detention and medical records.
According to the court papers one woman, known only as Mrs XY and now in her 70s, was suspected of being an EOKA member. She was taken from her home by Turkish Cypriot police in 1956, under the command of Detective Sergeant Geoffrey Leach. Court papers state she was driven to a forest area, beaten and raped by the officers.
She was then taken to a police station, beaten during interrogation and ‘pushed between her tormentors like a ball’, before passing out.
At one point a noose was tied around her neck and tightened.
In 1960, the Cyprus government paid for medical treatment for internal injuries resulting from the multiple rape, the newspaper added.
Her lawyers at Birmingham-based K. J. Conroy & Co argue that the colonial government not only breached the Convention on Human Rights, but also failed to protect the rights of its own subjects.
Christos Constantinou, 83, says he was arrested three times in 1956 and on the third occasion he was taken to the British Army camp Xeros, where he was punched and beaten. He was then stripped to the waist and whipped with a metal chain by a member of the intelligence corps and two Gordon Highlanders.
Christos Socratous, now 79, was detained in 1958. Then 18, he was kicked, beaten, stamped on, then forced to stand in a stress position – spreadeagled, with his arms up – for four hours.
‘They kept saying I was a terrorist and that I knew about a bomb going off,’ he said last week.
During his 28-day ordeal, he saw other young men being dragged from their cells to be tortured.
According to the British newspaper there had been complaints about the abuse at the time.
Former Grenadier Guards officer Jamie Eykyn, 79, told The Mail on Sunday that he and his colleague, the late Major Michael Stourton, were so appalled that they complained to their superiors. They were ignored, and the Ministry of Defence removed the episode from the official history of the Grenadier Guards.
