In its ruling released Thursday, the court placed particular weight on the failure of the authorities to determine whether the woman β who was 18 at the time of the alleged rape β had ever consented to having sex with some of the suspects. According to the ruling, the woman had told authorities she rejected the suggestion of having sex with multiple partners. However, the suspects persisted in entering the hotel room where the alleged rape took place, disregarding her pleas for them to leave.
According to testimony, some of them only assumed they would because of her previous behavior. This compounded what the court described as a series of flaws investigators in the initial state of the investigation, from a limited search of physical evidence such as fingerprints in the hotel room to failure to track down potential suspects or witnesses.
The July, case made headlines in Cyprus, Britain and Israel when all 12 suspects were released without charge after the woman retracted her rape claims. The Cyprus attorney-general opted not to pursue legal proceedings against the suspects, while the woman was subsequently found guilty on a charge of public mischief and sentenced to a four-month suspended jail term.
The European Court of Human Rights was considering the case of a British woman who claimed she was raped by a group of Israeli men in Cypriot authorities failed to investigate the original claims of a British woman who was later convicted of lying about being gang-raped on holiday there, the European Court of Human Rights has ruled.
After retracting her statement 10 days later, she was charged with "public mischief" for making the allegations. On Thursday, the ECHR highlighted a "series of shortcomings by the investigative authorities" and ruled they "had fallen short of the state's duty to effectively investigate the applicant's allegations".
