A British teenager found guilty of lying about being gang-raped in Cyprus has said she was attacked by a group of young men and boys behaving “like animals”.
The 19-year-old claimed she was raped by up to 12 Israeli tourists in a hotel room in the town of Ayia Napa on July 17, before being charged herself after signing a retraction statement 10 days later.
She maintains she was raped, but was forced to change her account under pressure from Cypriot police following hours of questioning alone and without legal representation.
The assaults were so frenzied she did not know how many of a group of 12 boys and young men raped her, she told the Sun.
“They were lining up, excited, talking and shouting in Hebrew,” said the teenager, who cannot be named.
“I was trying to fight them off but I just couldn’t.
“They were like a pack of animals – a pack of wolves.”
She admitted thinking she was going to die during the incident, which happened when she was 18.
She spent a month in prison before being granted bail in August, flying back to the UK earlier this month after being given a four-month jail sentence, suspended for three years, at Famagusta District Court in Paralimni.
Since returning to Britain she has launched an appeal against her public mischief conviction to Cyprus’s supreme court.
Political opponents have weighed in, with Foreign Office Minister Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon telling the House of Lords that issues around the case were of “deep concern” and Liberal Democrat Baroness Hussein-Ece calling it “a grotesque miscarriage of justice”.
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