A 32 year old man was jailed for eight years by Larnaca-Famagusta Criminal Court on Wednesday for raping a 20 year old British woman in Ayia Napa in June last year.
The defendant, who is a foreign national, was found guilty of rape in May.
According to the facts of the case, the woman had come to Cyprus in May 2019, was working as a waitress at a bar in Ayia Napa and lived in an apartment complex in the area with two friends. She was to fly back to her home country at the end of the tourist season.
She had finished her shift around 3 am on June 26, 2019, and was walking towards her flat when she came across the defendant who suggested they go in his car to look for laughing gas.
As they were driving, the defendant pulled out from under the driver’s seat a green bag containing cannabis, while he stopped twice to buy balloons and rubber bands to tie them.
He drove to an area in Sotira, both got out of the car and inhaled the laughing gas. Despite her repeated pleas to go home, the defendant raped her.
The court accepted the testimony of the 20-year-old and of the witnesses for the prosecution as reliable and dismissed that of the defendant as unreliable.
