A British student has appealed against her conviction for lying about being gang raped by a group of Israelis in Cyprus in 2019.
A district court judge had earlier ruled the woman had lied about being gang raped, and had convicted her of fomenting public mischief. By lodging an appeal, the 21-year-old woman is trying to overturn a four-month suspended sentence, according to The Guardian.
At the Cypriot Supreme Court on Thursday, her legal team said that her statement retracting the rape allegation was not reliable because of the way it was obtained. They said that she was placed under extreme pressure, and was detained for more than six hours, and had no access to a translator or a lawyer, but police have denied violating her rights.
The woman, who hails from Derbyshire, initially told Cypriot police that in July 2019, she had been raped by 12 Israeli boys and men in Ayia Napa, Cyprus. She was later convicted of causing public mischief after she retracted the allegation.
The woman is back in the UK, so she did not attend the two-hour appeal hearing Thursday. There was no ruling on it, reported BBC. After the hearing, one of the woman's lawyers, Lewis Power QC, said, "This is the biggest case here in the last decade beyond a shadow of a doubt and the world is watching." He thinks the case is a beacon, and is important for young women across the globe.
According to Power QC, the woman is getting on with her life at university, and even though she is very anxious about the result, she is "fairly upbeat and determined that this won't ruin her life." On the day of the hearing, many protesters gathered outside the court building. Some of them chanted, beat drums and held up banners that read "I believe her" and "End rape culture."
Nicoletta Charalambidou, the woman's Cypriot lawyer, said that the lower court had misunderstood the offence of public mischief, and that the trial judge did not let the defendant talk about the alleged rape. Her legal team is thinking of taking the case to the European Court of Human Rights if the conviction is not overturned.
