The lawyer for a 20-year-old woman who accused five men of raping her in Ayia Napa in September 2023 says it is ‘ridiculous’ they were acquitted, adding that telling her the outcome of the case was ‘one of the hardest phone calls I have ever had to make’
The acquittal of five men accused of the gang rape of a 20-year-old British woman in Cyprus has been met with fury by her legal team and campaigners. On Monday, Famagusta criminal court cleared the defendants of two counts of rape, one count of sexual abuse, one count of forced sexual intercourse, one count of sexual harassment, and one count of abduction.
The woman told police in September 2023 she had been sexually assaulted and raped by five Israeli nationals in the resort of Ayia Napa. In its decision, the court said the woman’s testimony was not credible, had inconsistencies and weaknesses where it concerned identifying individuals and the actions they were accused of.
The panel of three judges specified misidentification was “not abnormal” in such circumstances, but ruled her testimony had several contradictions. The court ruled her statement where she claimed she was dragged from a party of 100 people was not convincing, as a friend testified seeing her go upstairs to a room with another person.
But her lawyer Michael Polak, from Justice Abroad, said the ruling was “ridiculous”. He said: “The young lady in this case is gay, any suggestion that she voluntarily agreed to group sex with men she had never met before, who were speaking in a different language, is ridiculous. She has been left completely distraught by the court’s verdict today. It was one of the hardest phone calls I have ever had to make.”
He said the judges had provided “no reason” for its decision to acquit all defendants, adding the court excluded DNA evidence of two defendants as the Cypriot Police “failed to follow proper procedures”. All five accused had been remanded in custody since the alleged incident on September 3 2023.
On Monday, they were allowed to walk free with lawyer Nir Yaslovitzh, who represented two of the men, telling Israel’s Channel 12: “It is a brave decision that completely rejected the complainant’s version and completely accepts our clients’ version.” Mr Polak said the case was further proof of a sexist attitude in Cyprus’s ‘patriarchal’ justice system.
“Recently, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that there is no effective protection for women subject to sexual offences in the Republic of Cyprus,” he added. “Unfortunately, nothing I have seen shows that there have been any improvements in this area.” He did not rule out the case being taken to the European Court of Human Rights.
In February, another British woman who also claimed she had been gang-raped in Ayia Napa by more than a dozen Israeli men in July 2019 won a “monumental victory” over Cypriot authorities after the Strasbourg-based tribunal ruled they had “failed in their obligation to effectively investigate the applicant’s complaint of rape”.
Judge Michalis Papathanasiou, sitting in Paralimni on Monday, had been the judge on the district court who had overseen the earlier case. Last year, the island’s supreme court not only overturned his decision but, in an unusual rebuke, criticised the way he had conducted proceedings, agreeing with the defendant’s lawyers that the trial process had been “manifestly unfair” and his “interruptions and interventions unjustified and inadmissible”.
Women’s groups and campaigners voiced outrage as they reacted to Monday’s ruling, with some raising the prospect of the close diplomatic ties between Cyprus and Israel influencing the judgment.
“What this shows is that Cypriot courts haven’t reflected at all on their past mistakes,” said Susana Pavlou, who heads the Mediterranean Institute of Gender Studies in Nicosia, the island’s capital. “We are shocked and appalled.”
Pavlou said she had been particularly angered by the court’s argument that, although the woman had taken class A drugs and consumed a “significant amount” of alcohol, neither were enough to remove “her ability to consent”.
“That was particularly shocking,” she said. “It is clear, more than ever, that judicial authorities in Cyprus continue to be influenced by stereotypical attitudes and beliefs in relation to victims of sexual violence and rape.”
