2 Sep 2019; MEMO: Two Israelis have been arrested on suspicion of raping a 19-year-old German teen on the Greek island of Crete.
The two Israelis – a 29-year-old and 35-year-old man who have not been named – were arrested yesterday in Hersonissos, a popular tourist resort on the Greek island of Crete, after the German teen filed a complaint to local police.
According to the complaint, the young woman met the Israelis at a nightclub, after which they invited her to their hotel room for a drink. The victim claims the Israelis then forced her to have sex with them.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry confirmed the two men’s arrest in a statement yesterday, but refused to give further details “out of respect for personal privacy”.
In an interview with Hebrew-language daily Maariv this morning, the attorney representing the two men, Gila Liber-Golan, slammed the allegation against her clients as “a total fabrication” and stressed there is “not a shred of evidence” to support the alleged victim’s claim.
Liber-Golan also revealed that the pair will attend a hearing tomorrow in local courts, saying that “during the hearing we will present all of our evidence and I hope the court accepts it. Nothing happened, period.”
“I don’t know what [the alleged victim] claims because I haven’t seen her testimony yet. We’ll get that today,” the attorney continued, adding: “They’re both 30 somethings with respectable professions, not 17 year old kids. You can imagine they didn’t come to Crete to look for someone to gang up on.”
Liber-Golan’s comments will be interpreted as a thinly-veiled reference to a recent incident in which 12 Israeli teenagers were arrested on suspicion of gang-raping a 19-year-old British tourist in Cyprus.
The Israelis – all aged 15 to 18 – were arrested in July on suspicion of raping the unnamed British teen in the popular tourist resort of Aya Napa. The young woman filed a complaint to Cypriot authorities in which she claimed to have attended a party with one of the suspects, later agreeing to go to his hotel room. She claimed that, once inside, 11 other teens entered the room and proceeded to rape her, holding her down and filming the assault while she screamed.
However, little over a week later all 12 teenagers were released and allowed to return to Israel, after the British woman admitted to having fabricated her accusations against them. The teen confessed that she had engaged in consensual sex with several of the Israelis but was filmed by them in the process, making her feel “angry and insulted” and prompting her to file the rape accusation.
Liber-Golan also represented one of the teens allegedly involved in the Cyprus case, but told Israel’s Channel 13 News there is “no resemblance” between the two cases.
In the Cyprus affair, the British teen has been arrested on “public mischief” charges and could face up to a year in prison for misleading local authorities. However, in yet another twist, last month the teen claimed she was forced to retract her statement against the Israelis under duress, arguing that she was denied access to a lawyer and that Cypriot police had threatened to arrest her friends if she did not recant her testimony.
The teen has since pleaded not guilty to making false rape claims. She was released on bail, though is required to stay in Cyprus until she stands trial on 2 October.
For their part, the Israeli teens could yet face criminal proceedings back in Israel for having filmed the alleged incident. Israel Police last month announced it was considering opening an investigation into the 12 youths under a 2014 Israeli law which bans the circulation of “revenge porn” – a phenomenon in which images or videos of a sex act are distributed online without the consent of the person featured.
In the weeks following the alleged rape, videos of the British teen were seemingly circulated via popular messaging service WhatsApp and on pornography websites, before being seized by Cypriot police to be used as evidence.
The 2014 law states that anyone found guilty of posting such content online will be prosecuted as sex offenders, with the offence punishable by up to five years in prison. However, it is not yet clear whether Israel Police will be able to proceed with the investigation, given that the incident took place in Cyprus where circulating revenge porn is not illegal.
