Defence Team Submit Grounds of Appeal Against Conviction of Teenager Found Guilty of Public Mischief After Reporting Group Rape in Cyprus

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Defence Team Submit Grounds of Appeal Against Conviction of Teenager Found Guilty of Public Mischief After Reporting Group Rape in Cyprus

Justice Abroad is assisting the British teenager and her family in their pursuit of justice.

Today the team assembled by Justice Abroad submitted grounds of appeal against conviction to the Supreme Court of Cyprus.  The expert legal team Justice Abroad has mustered comprises of Lewis Power QC, a top barrister from Church Court Chambers at the English Bar of the senior rank of Queen’s Counsel, Cypriot lawyer Nicoletta Charalambidou, an experienced human rights advocate, and Ritsa Pekri, a criminal law expert.

Justice Abroad’s Michael Polak is co-ordinating the appeal against the teenager’s conviction which will proceed in the Cypriot Supreme Court, the one level of appeal within the Republic of Cyprus, and move on to both the European Court of Justice and European Court of Human Rights if justice cannot be provided by the Supreme Court.

The grounds of appeal submitted today are that:

·       The retraction statement should not have been admitted in the trial proceedings given that it was obtained after the Defendant has been detained in the Police station for  almost 7 hours, without a lawyer, and without a translator. Further, it was submitted that the retraction statement is unreliable and should have been excluded because of the PTSD suffered by the Defendant, that the social media messages exhibited by the Defendant demonstrate that she was being placed under intense pressure to retract the rape allegation, and that the evidence of the forensic linguist Dr Andrea Nini that it is highly unlikely that the retraction statement contained the words of the teenager as claimed by the investigation officer Marios Christou should have resulted in its exclusion;

·       The reliance on the retraction statement as the decisive evidence against the Defendant that she had lied about being raped was against her rights to a fair trial under Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights;

·       The Judge at the District Court did not provide the Defendant with a fair hearing and closed his mind to an essential element of the offence by continuously shouting ‘this is not a rape trial, I don’t want to hear evidence about rape’ as well as preventing the Defence team from properly examining and putting forward evidence which supported the teenager’s account that a rape had taken place as described;

·       The Court did not properly consider the evidence before it, including DNA evidence of three of the Israeli youths on a condom which was also found with blood on it, and the evidence from two English youths and the Doctor at the hotel about the state of the teenager when they found her on the night of the rape incident, which supports the teenager’s account of what took place;

·       The Court did not take into account the prosecuting authorities failure to conduct a proper investigation into the rape;

·       The Court failed to properly explain why it found all prosecution witnesses to be credible but immediately discounted the evidence of all of the defence witnesses;

·       The Court did not take into account the failure of the prosecuting authority to adduce evidence to prove what happened on the night of the rape in the hotel room in that they failed to call the Israeli youths to give evidence. Therefore the Court was left with only the teenager’s testimony about what happened in that room and should not have found to the criminal standard that she lied about being raped as a consequence;

·       The Court failed to properly take into account the evidence of the pathologist Dr Marios Matsakis in which he said that the injuries to the teenager supported what she has said about being subject to a group rape;

·       The general aggressive and dismissive behaviour of the trial Judge to the Defendant and the Defence team resulted in the Defendant not having a fair trial and demonstrated a clear bias against the Defendant when compared to the way that he communicated with the prosecution;

·       As well as being in breach of the Defendants rights under Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights and the Defendant's rights under the Cypriot Constitution and the common law,  the retraction statement should not have been admitted in the criminal trial as it was taken in direct contravention of European Union Directive 2013/48/EU which provides for access to a lawyer;

·       The failure of the prosecuting authority to properly consider all of the evidence for disclosure and to disclose all documents which were obtained by the prosecuting authority in the investigation of the rape, including the medical report of the Israeli youths and the telephone communication data from all the phones which were seized during the investigation, was a breach of the Defendants rights under the common law, Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights,  and  Directive  2012/13/EU on the right to information;  and that

·       The failure of the prosecuting authority to provide independent interpretation services to the Defendant at all times when she was being questioned by the Police which resulted in misunderstandings as to her evidence was in breach of her rights to a fair trial under the common law, Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, and European Directive 2010/64/EU which provides for the right to translation. 

Justice Abroad’s Michael Polak stated the following:

‘Strong grounds of appeal have been submitted to the Supreme Court of Cyprus today and we hope that proceedings will be expedited so that the teenager does not have this conviction hanging over her for a long time. It is in everybody’s interests for the Supreme Court to deal with this quickly and fairly.

We hope that the Supreme Court will properly consider the numerous clear grounds as to why the conviction is unsafe and will set aside the conviction preventing the defence from having to go outside Cyprus to the Court of Justice for the European Union and European Court of Human Rights to obtain justice.  

When the trial proceedings are considered dispassionately, it is clear that the teenager did not receive a fair trial before the Famagusta District Court and that her unfair treatment, and the treatment of her representatives and witness was in clear contrast to the treatment the prosecution and its witness experienced

The conviction of the teenager not only breaches the teenagers rights under Cypriot law, but it also amounts to a breach of Cyprus’s international obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights and as a member of the European Union.’

The teenager, her family, and the legal team would like to convey their thanks to all that have supported the campaign for justice so far and for the generous donations to the Go Fund Me fund (www.gofundme.com/f/Help-Teen-Victim-Get-Justice-In-Cyprus)

The teenager and her mother will not be giving interviews as she helps the teenager to return to her life in the United Kingdom. We ask that their privacy is respected.

Justice Abroad is happy to deal with any enquiries by email: Contact@JusticeAbroad.co.uk

Notes to Editors

Justice Abroad, www.justiceabroad.co.uk  has been set up to help those trying to find their way through foreign justice systems with all the associated hurdles that presents. To help such families with these dilemmas and many more, three experts, Michael Polak, a barrister with an international practice focussed on the assistance of foreign nationals in trouble around the world, David Swindle ,  a former Detective Superintendent who has worked on hundreds of murders and complex high profile investigations in the UK and abroad during his 34 years in the police, and David Walters MVO, a former British Diplomat with over thirty years’ experience having served in over a dozen countries around the world, have pooled their extensive experience.  Justice Abroad is endeavouring to ensure that their client experiences a fair, transparent, and unbiased trial process in Cyprus.

Lewis Power QC is a barrister who was called to the Bar of England and Wales in 1990 and achieved the senior rank of Queen’s Counsel (QC) in 2011. He has a strong reputation for fighting difficult cases at trial and advising and advocating in matters with international and cross-jurisdictional elements.

Nicoletta Charalambidou is human rights lawyer with an expertise on European Union law and with a particular interest in victims and suspects rights in criminal procedures and discrimination in the administration of justice. She is also a member to the Legal Experts Advisory Panel of Fair Trials. 

Ritsa Pekri is a civil and criminal law lawyer working with Nicoletta Charalambidou LLC with strong experience in criminal cases and those matters involving human rights related issues.

Justice Abroad is also cooperating with KISA - Action for Equality, Support, Antiracism which is a national NGO active in the field of antidiscrimination and antiracism, including discrimination in the administration of justice and a human rights violations watchdog working in the field of victim and suspects rights under EU law.