A criminal court in Cyprus has acquitted five Israeli men accused of gang-raping a British woman after ruling her testimony was not credible.
The acquittal means the defendants cannot be brought to trial again on the same charges that included sexual assault and abduction.
The court found, during closed-doors proceedings, that most of the contradictions in the woman’s testimony concerned the identification of the perpetrators.
The court said the woman’s initial statement to investigators following the alleged rape presented a number of “weaknesses,” which under the circumstances weren’t “out of the ordinary.”
But investigators’ doubts regarding the woman’s credibility grew when she offered “entirely incomprehensible and inconsistent” explanations regarding the contradictions in her testimony – specifically the identification of the perpetrators which also included a line-up.
The announcement also noted contradictions in the woman’s statements to police regarding who and how many of the five defendants had committed rape.
According to the court, the woman initially accused three men of rape while in a subsequent statement she accused five, two of whom weren’t in the room where the rape occurred.
The court also referred to witness testimony disproving the woman’s claim that she had screamed for help and that someone had opened the door to the hotel room to let others inside.
The court said the woman – who was 20 at the time of the alleged rape – was under the influence of a “significant” amount of alcohol and the hallucinogens MDA and MDMA. popularly known as “Sally” and “Molly.”
But it found the quantities in her system weren’t enough to “remove her ability for consent” since she testified that she only felt “a little dizzy” after consuming the alcohol and drugs.
All five of the Israeli men had pleaded not guilty to all the charges.
Police had said the British woman picked the five Israelis out of a line-up as having raped her during a hotel pool party in the coastal resort town of Ayia Napa.
The ruling came after the European Court of Human Rights ruled last month that Cyprus’ law enforcement authorities failed to live up to their obligation to thoroughly and effectively investigate a British teenager’s claims that she had been gang-raped by a group of Israelis while on a 2019 vacation in Ayia Napa.
