A British teenager who claims she was gang raped by Israeli tourists in a holiday resort in Cyprus today said that she feared for her life after “aggressive” police allegedly forced her to sign a retraction.

The 19 year old told a court that she underwent around eight hours of questioning, without a lawyer or family member, after police accused her of fabricating the rape story.

They allege that she made it up because she was embarrassed and humiliated to learn that she had been filmed having sex with at least one of the Israeli men.

The teenager denied that, insisting she had been raped and saying that police put her under intense pressure to sign the retraction.

They told her that unless she did so “the next time I see my mum I will be in handcuffs in a courtroom,” she told the court.

The British woman claimed in July that during a night out in Ayia Napa, a wild party town on the southern coast of Cyprus, she was taken advantage of by a group of 12 Israeli tourists, an unspecified number of whom raped her in a hotel room.

Ten days later, she signed a retraction – which her lawyers say was written under duress – and is now on trial for causing public mischief in a court in the nearby town of Paralimni.