A 19-year-old British holidaymaker, who accused 12 Israeli teens of sexual assault, will stand trial for making up the rape allegations after her claims to have retracted the initial complanint due to police pressure were found to be unreliable, by a court in Cyprus on Thursday.
The British teen was indicted four months ago for perjury and public mischief after she admitted to falsely accusing the Israeli youths of gang-raping her in the Cypriot resort town of Ayia Napa on July 17. The woman then said she was coerced by police to retract from her initial complaint.
According to a report in the Daily Mail, a judge in the Cypriot city of Famagusta declared the woman to be an “unreliable witness” and ruled that her statement, where she admits to making up the rape claims, is admissible as evidence.
The judge said a welfare officer had accompanied the young woman during her eight-hour police interrogation and no pressure had been put on the teen to withdraw the initial complaint.
He added that the evidence provided by an expert psychologist, who said the Brit was suffering from PTSD in the aftermath of the alleged rape, was constructed to favor the accused.
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Israelis accused of rape arrive at Ben Gurion Airport after being released
(Photo: Yair Sagi)
The judge also dismissed the evidence from a linguistic expert, which stated a non-English speaker wrote the retraction of the complaint.
The teen gave her statement, retracting the initial complaint less than two weeks after the incident, when the main investigator, Marius Christiano, arrived at the hotel the British woman was staying with her family.
He confronted the UK teen with all the DNA evidence as well videos of her having seemingly consensual sexual intercourse with the accused men. The young woman struggled to provide credible answers and eventually confessed to have fabricated the story about assault because she was angry the ordeal had been filmed without her permission.
The Israelis, all aged between 16 and 18 were released shortly after.
The maximum sentence for the charges she is facing is a year of incarceration, with or without an added fine.