NICOSIA: A Cyprus court on Monday dismissed as unreliable the evidence against five Israeli tourists accused of gang-raping a British woman in the holiday resort of Ayia Napa and ordered them freed.
The five, then aged 19 to 20, were from the Arab-Israeli town of Majd Al-Krum. They had pleaded not guilty to several rape-related charges dating back to September 2023.
A similar case six years ago in Ayia Napa, the Mediterranean island’s premier party spot, caused an uproar after the alleged victim was herself convicted of causing public mischief.
The five men in the more recent case were accused of rape, sexual assault by penetration, sexual intercourse through violence, rape by compelling sexual penetration, indecent assault against a woman, sexual harassment, and abduction.
The Famagusta Criminal Court acquitted them on all counts, ruling that the complainant’s version of events “contained multiple significant contradictions.”
A court announcement said the woman’s testimony had “inherent weaknesses” regarding the identification and attribution of actions to specific individuals.
According to the court, her account was an “unsafe basis for drawing conclusions on disputed issues, such as the question of consent regarding what happened inside the disputed room.”
“Given these substantial credibility issues in her testimony, as stated in the court’s decision, the complainant was deemed unreliable,” it added.
The then 20-year-old woman told police she was forcibly taken from a swimming pool party to a hotel room where the rape occurred.
Judges ruled that claim “unconvincing,” while she also changed her statement about how many people were in the room and attributed the same sexual act to different people.
Her claim that she shouted for help was contradicted by witnesses in an adjacent room who did not hear any shouting, the court statement said.
Additionally, it was taken into account that the complainant was under the influence of a significant amount of alcohol and drugs, although “this was not to such an extent that it rendered her incapable of giving consent,” the court said.
The court concluded that injuries on her body “could not be determined to have occurred during the incident and could also appear during consensual intercourse.”
Justice Abroad, a group which said it is “supporting” the complainant, said in a statement that she is “completely distraught” by the acquittal. Her family is raising funds to challenge the verdict, it said.
In the earlier case, Cyprus police arrested 12 Israelis in 2019 after a British teenager reported being gang-raped.
The Israelis were released after she retracted her statement, although she claimed the police had pressured her into doing so.
The 19-year-old received a four-month suspended jail term, but the Supreme Court in 2022 quashed her conviction.
On Thursday the European Court of Human Rights condemned Cyprus for “various failures” and “prejudicial gender stereotypes” in its handling of that case.
cc/it
