Cyprus is too busy playing politics to care about justice

A young British women allegedly raped in Cyprus has been cleared of lying – but questions remain about democracy and rule of law on the island

Activists stage a protest in support of a British teenager accused of fasely claiming she was raped by Israeli tourists, during her trial in eastern Cyprus in 2019 (AFP/Getty)

On the face of it, some justice has at last been served in the story of a 19-year-old British student allegedly raped by 12 Israeli men at a Cyprus beach resort in 2019.

Two years ago, the Cypriot police and a local judge tried to blame the young woman and allowed her alleged attackers to return to Israel as fast as possible. There was outrage in Cyprus and a legal campaign was launched to overturn the four-month suspended sentence handed to the young woman for “fomenting public mischief”. She was allowed to return home to Derby with a guilty verdict for fabricating her claim.

Now Cyprus’s Supreme Court has overturned the conviction and cleared her name. Her family and the lawyers who took up her case are, naturally, delighted.

But it is worth remembering, despite this welcome news, that the brutal sexual assault claim seems to have been swept to one side for reasons of realpolitik. Cyprus is one of the more corrupt EU member states, where Russian oligarchs regularly launder money. Cyprus issued 3,000 EU passports to Russian and Chinese “businessmen” with side payments to politicians, until the scheme was exposed in 2020.

That was also the year when Cyprus forged an anti-Turkish strategic alliance with Israel and Greece to jointly exploit gas fields in the eastern Mediterranean. Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, reputed to be a secret member of the Muslim Brotherhood, a major anti-Jewish and anti-Israeli Islamist network, originating in Egypt, has stoked up tensions against Greece and Cyprus as Ankara claimed territorial water rights over the eastern Mediterranean with its Greek islands.

In a major diplomatic coup, the Greek government signed a triple alliance with Israel and Cyprus which was renewed with grand pomp in Jerusalem in December. The US is also involved in the alliance to counter Turkey irredentism. Israel is now stretching its diplomatic wings as a regional power following the decision of the UAE and Bahrain to recognise Israel and open an embassy in Jerusalem under the so-called Abraham Accords in August 2020.

For Israel to break out of the Arab League’s recognition boycott and regional isolation was important. So was the Israeli commitment to invest and encourage tourism in Cyprus following the formation of the Eastern Mediterranean Gas Forum – in effect, a Greek-driven strategic partnership to offset Turkey’s aggressive anti-Greek foreign policy set in motion by Erdogan.

The young English woman was an unwitting victim in these diplomatic manoeuvrings. There was no way Cyprus, a member of the Commonwealth, was going to charge, detain or put on trial – let alone imprison – 12 Israeli men on charges of rape. The young men were rushed out of Cyprus. Instead, in what appeared to be a cynical manipulation of justice, the young woman was accused by the police of lying. A court found her guilty and imposed a four-month prison sentence which was suspended.

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Now that the Israel-Greece-Cyprus triple alliance is better rooted and delivering for its three member states, as well as for the US, which wants to see Israel accepted as a legitimate state in the region, no one is going to bring the Israelis back to answer for their alleged crimes.

Cyprus, meanwhile, as one of the EU’s offshore financial centres, remains beholden to Russia for financial investment flows, often from illegal sources. Cyprus has become a quasi-Russian colony in the Mediterranean with 10,000 permanent residents in a population of 1.2 million and 8.2 million tourist visitors from Russia in the decade before the Covid pandemic.

The Cypriot city of Limassol is known as Limassolgrad and over half the golden EU passports were sold to Russians. The law office founded by the Cypriot president, Nicos Anastasiades, and now run by his children was involved in processing EU passports for Russians.

So while a young British woman claims some vindication after she was badly treated by Cypriot police and law officers, the people accused of attacking her remain free and uncharged and Cyprus continues its role as an ally of Israel and a friend of the Kremlin.

Denis MacShane is the UK’s former minister of Europe