Filenews 13 September 2021
On Thursday, the appeal of the young British woman who in January last year was convicted of a false rape allegation by 12 Israelis in Ayia Napa in July 2019, is filed at Nicosia's Supreme Court.
According to the Daily Telegraph, the young woman's British and Cypriot lawyers will argue in a 70-page memo that the sentence and subsequent four months' suspended imprisonment of their client was "extremely unreliable" and should be overturned.
They point out that as long as the conviction is in force it destroys the future of a young woman who was ultimately the victim of a sexual assault.
The young woman from Derbyshire, England, was 19 years old when she suffered the alleged rape. She later withdrew her complaint, but as she claims, under pressure and under the instructions of the Cypriot police and without the presence of a lawyer.
Her British lawyer Michael Pollack states that "from a human rights perspective it is the most important case in Cyprus in the last ten years".
He adds that the case "will determine whether basic guarantees of a fair trial, such as the right to be represented by a lawyer and to receive a fair trial, are protected in Cyprus".
Mr. Pollack also argues that there is a similar earlier case in Limassol with a confession of a young person without the presence of a lawyer, for which the European Court of Human Rights ruled against Cyprus, so there is a legal precedent.
As the Telegraph reports, if the appeal does not lead to the reversal of the first instance judgment, the young British woman's lawyers will appeal to the European Court of Human Rights.
CNA
