As the teenage defendant filed into the courtroom she glanced back to acknowledge the women lined up in the last row of the public gallery.

Each had a gag over their mouths with an image of stitched-up lips, in a show of support.

“We believe you, we are with you,” they shouted before the judge ordered silence.

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The teenager threw them a quick thumbs up before turning round to hear her fate.

Six months earlier she had filed a complaint to police that she had been gang raped in her hotel room during a summer break in Cyprus.

Now she was on trial for fabricating the incident, charged with “causing public mischief”, defined by the Cypriot criminal code as knowingly providing police with “a false statement…

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