All she wanted was one last summer adventure before buckling down to the beginnings of adult life.
If all had gone to plan, the 19-year-old would have flown home from Cyprus with nothing more than a few lively gap year stories to show for it, and by now would presumably have been happily settled into university life.
Continue reading...Woman convicted of lying about rape has many obstacles to overcome to overturn the court’s ruling
The legal challenge facing the 19-year-old British woman who wants to clear her name after being convicted of lying about being gang-raped in Cyprus is formidable.
Continue reading...Woman convicted of lying about being gang-raped is due to be sentenced on Tuesday
The foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, has urged Cyprus to “do the right thing” in the case of a British teenager convicted of lying about being gang-raped in Ayia Napa but cautioned against aggravating the situation before her sentencing this week.
Last week, a judge ruled the 19-year-old wilfully indulged in public mischief in claiming she was raped by a group of Israeli males while on holiday in July.
Continue reading...The British teenager allegedly gang-raped in Cyprus could face a three-year wait to exhaust the legal process relating to her conviction for lying. The long delay increases pressure on the Foreign Office to lobby Cyprus to expedite the appeal process.
The student, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was ruled to have “wilfully indulged in public mischief” by claiming that she was raped by a group of male Israeli tourists while on holiday in Ayia Napa last July.
Continue reading...Summer Takeover’s move comes amid anger over her treatment by Cyprus authorities
The UK tour operator behind the working holiday on which a British teenager was allegedly gang raped has said it will no longer send young clubbers to Ayia Napa following a week of rising anger about her treatment by Cypriot authorities.
Summer Takeover said it would stop operations at the resort “in any capacity” after the Guardian discovered it was still promoting the much-criticised budget hotel where the young woman was allegedly attacked by a group of Israelis in July.
Continue reading...Mother of British teenager found guilty of lying about rape is among those who have publicly rejected the verdict
Pressure is mounting on the Cypriot authorities to reassess the case of a British teenager found guilty of lying about being gang-raped as anger rises over the verdict.
Calls for a tourism boycott of the country were backed by the woman’s mother, who said Ayia Napa, the holiday resort in which her 19-year-old daughter said the attack took place, was unsafe.
Continue reading...Mother of woman found guilty of lying about being gang-raped says Ayia Napa resort is unsafe
The mother of a British teenager found guilty of lying about being gang-raped in Cyprus has backed calls for a tourism boycott of the country.
The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that she supported the campaign and that she believed the resort town of Ayia Napa was unsafe.
Continue reading...Psychologist says woman’s mental state has worsened and she needs urgent therapy
A British teenager who was found guilty of lying about being gang-raped in Cyprus was suffering from severe post-traumatic stress disorder when she retracted her claims and needs urgent therapy to avoid “life-changing” damage, her psychologist has told the Guardian.
The 19-year-old woman was ruled by a judge in Cyprus to have wilfully indulged in public mischief by claiming she was raped by a group of Israeli males while on holiday in Ayia Napa in July.
Continue reading...Foreign Office says case of 19-year-old who said she was gang-raped is ‘deeply distressing’
The UK government is to raise concerns with the authorities in Cyprus over the fairness of a trial in which a British teenager was found guilty of lying about being gang-raped.
A judge ruled on Monday that the 19-year-old wilfully indulged in public mischief in claiming she was raped by a group of Israeli males aged between 15 and 22 while she was on holiday in Ayia Napa in July.
Continue reading...It is 45 years since Turkey and Greece came to blows in Cyprus, and the island remains physically and politically divided - not least by a wall that cuts through the capital, Nicosia. But a new generation of conscientious objectors are risking prison – and the scorn of their elders – by refusing to take up arms against each other
It’s one of Britain’s best-loved imports, but now supplies of the ‘squeaky’ Cypriot cheese are running perilously low
Gently, I pull my halloumi from its loose plastic wrapping. I do this delicately, since, like funfair goldfish or those waterproof watches you can buy at the airport, halloumi comes sealed in a bag of liquid, as if the poor cheese was in a rush to reach you and has lost a good part of its weight in sweat. I slice the spongy, cuboid form and let its segments slap and sizzle into the pan, where its edges turn from brilliant, Tipp-Ex white to a golden yellow. The rectangles don’t melt so much as separate at each end, until each resembles something like a chubby letter H, or an artist’s representation of a chromosome.
Halloumi has been a consistent part of my diet for most of the nine years I’ve been in London. Its appeal is in its zesty tang and its odd, formless texture. That tooth-satisfying squish and give that makes it readily applicable to so many methods of cooking; barbecued in strips, cooked with a salad, or positioned as a meat substitute wherever needed.
Continue reading...Three PMs attend marketing sales event on how wealthy can snap up citizenship from $100,000
Three prime ministers took to a stage in the ballroom of a five-star London hotel this week offering the world’s wealthiest people “golden passports” and citizenship of their countries in return for hundreds of thousands of pounds of investment or flat “contributions”.
Allen Chastanet, the prime minister of the Caribbean island of St Lucia, told about 300 members of the super-rich elite and their advisers gathered at the Rosewood hotel for “global citizenship conference” that his country’s economic mission was “going after high net-worth individuals and giving them a comfortable place to live”.
Continue reading...Thirty years from the fall of the Berlin Wall, new global tensions are polarising our world – and our cities feel more divided than ever. From today and for the next four weeks, our international film series will tell the stories of five cities that reflect these divisions in surprising and troubling ways
Thirty years ago, a rapt world watched the unfolding of one of the great city stories of all time. Every hammer blow chipping away the imposing grey blocks of the Berlin Wall, which had come to embody global geopolitical divisions, seemed to herald a more united future.
Since then, however, our world has fractured anew and our cities feel more divided than ever. When the Berlin Wall fell, there were two border walls in Europe; now there are 15. Nor is this fracture merely physical: many cities are havens of wealth and privilege for those who hold the access codes, hives of struggle and poverty for those who do not. Wherever I travel to report I have always been struck by how different people can have such contrasting experiences of the same city – and it’s no different at home, in my neighbourhood of Camberwell, south London, where upscale coffee shops and gang violence occupy the same stretches of road.
Continue reading...Former president says ancient pottery should have remained in Downing Street collection
When Cyprus’s former president George Vassiliou made the official gift of an ancient vase to Margaret Thatcher in 1988, he assumed it would remain at 10 Downing Street.
Instead, more than three decades later, the sale at auction of the 2,700-year-old pottery has provoked diplomatic discomfort in London and disquiet in Nicosia.
Continue reading...Woman, 19, to go on trial after revoking claim she was raped by 12 Israeli tourists
Human rights and feminist groups are calling for Cypriot authorities to drop the case against a British teenager accused of falsely claiming she was raped by 12 Israeli tourists in a hotel room.
The 19-year-old, who reported the alleged assault almost three months ago but was then arrested after revoking her criminal complaint, is due to go on trial on Tuesday on a charge of public mischief. She has pleaded not guilty to fabricating the accusation of rape, but could be imprisoned for up to a year if found guilty.
Continue reading...Greek Orthodox cleric claimed gay men recognisable from ‘particular odour’
Police in Cyprus have opened an investigation into homophobic remarks made by a controversial bishop.
At the request of the island’s attorney general, investigators will examine whether the Greek Cypriot Orthodox prelate, known popularly by his first name, Neophytos, violated hate speech laws after he claimed that homosexuality could be passed on when pregnant women had anal sex.
Continue reading...19-year-old UK tourist to appear in Cypriot court on suspicion of making false complaint
Police in Cyprus have released seven Israeli tourists from detention and said the British teenager who accused them of gang rape would face court on suspicion of making a false allegation.
“All seven Israelis have been released, since 10am,” a police spokesman said. “The young woman will be taken to court tomorrow morning.”
Continue reading...A stray missile has exploded in mid-air over villages in northern Cyprus, thought to have been fired by Syrian forces in response to an Israeli attack. Hours after the projectile struck the area at about 1am local time (11pm BST) debris was still being discovered in Turkish Cypriot villages
Continue reading...Voracious fish are bleeding into ocean ‘like a cut artery’, says top marine biologist
Cyprus has held its first organised cull of lionfish after numbers of the invasive species have proliferated in recent years, threatening the Mediterranean ecosystem and posing a venomous danger to humans.
“They’re actually very placid,” said Prof Jason Hall-Spencer, a marine biologist, after spearing 16 of the exotic specimens in the space of 40 minutes in the inaugural “lionfish removal derby” off the island’s southern coast. He added: “The problem is they are not part of the natural ecosystem and we are seeing them in plague proportions.”
Continue reading...Dispute likely to escalate after Nicosia said it would seek to arrest anyone caught drilling
Tensions over energy resources in the eastern Mediterranean have risen sharply after Turkey said it would “exercise its sovereign rights” to drill off Cyprus in flagrant defiance of warnings from western allies.
As the dispute over potential gas reserves intensified, Ankara insisted its state-of-the-art drilling ship, the Fatih, and its support vessels would begin operations in waters viewed by the EU as being within the island’s exclusive economic zone.
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