A BRITISH woman accused of fabricating claims that she was gang-raped in Cyprus has had her conviction for lying overturned by the country’s Supreme Court.

Today’s ruling has been hailed as an “important day for women’s rights and victims of rape.” 

The case related to events in Ayia Napa in July 2019, when the then teenage student, who is now 21, said she was gang-raped by a group of 11 Israelis in a hotel room. 

After signing a retraction statement 10 days later, she was charged with causing public mischief and given a four-month suspended sentence. 

The woman maintained that she had been put under pressure by officers to withdraw the rape allegation, and her defence team argued that the withdrawal was extracted by police in the absence of a lawyer or translator after eight hours of questioning. 

The woman was sentenced in January 2020 and was allowed to fly home. Her English and Cypriot lawyers took the case to the Supreme Court last September, arguing that she had not been given a fair trial, and Michael Polak of legal aid group Justice Abroad, which co-ordinated the appeal, described the court’s decision on Monday as a watershed moment.

“Not just for our client, who has always maintained her innocence  — even when doing so caused her the hardship of not being able to return home during the lengthy trial proceedings — but also for others around the world in similar positions,” he said. 

Mr Polak said fair trial provisions had been totally disregarded during the trial and that there was a predetermination of guilt, and added that the court had ignored expert evidence and failed to take into account police failures during the investigation into rape allegations. 

The treatment of the woman, who has never been publicly identified, at the hands of the Cyprus courts and police triggered protests by women’s rights groups. 

Her lawyer Nicoletta Charalambidou said: “This is a very important day for women’s rights, and in particular for victims of rape or other forms of sexual violence in Cyprus.

“The acquittal by the Supreme Court of the young teenager points to the failure of the authorities to effectively investigate the rape claims she reported. This is what we will now pursue.”

The woman’s mother said that while the decision does not excuse the way her daughter was treated by the Cypriot authorities, “it does bring with it the hope that my daughter’s suffering will at least bring positive changes in the way victims of crime are treated.”