A British teenager facing trial in Cyprus on charges of falsely claiming she was gang raped by 12 Israelis has said she was forced to retract the allegations by local police.

The 19-year-old, who is due to attend a plea hearing on Wednesday in Paralimni, close to the party resort of Ayia Napa where she had alleged the incident took place, insists she was coerced into signing a confession revoking the criminal complaint. After the retraction her alleged assailants, aged 15 to 18, were released from custody and returned home.

The young woman, who cannot be identified unless she is found culpable, was arrested and charged last week with “public mischief”, an offence that carries a jail sentence of up to a year. She has since been remanded in prison in Nicosia.

But the legal aid group Justice Abroad, which is assisting the teenager, denied she had voluntarily recanted the rape allegation.

Michael Polak, a British barrister with the organisation, said in a statement she had been refused legal representation, despite requests and in contravention of the European convention on human rights. None of the proceedings conducted by Cypriot police were recorded, he claimed.

“What in fact occurred was that the teenager was taken to the police station [where] she was asked to provide a further statement in regard to the rape allegations,” said Polak. “After providing a further written statement, the police officer told her that he believed that she was lying about the allegations and that he wanted to help her. He told her to write a confession and that if she did not do so he would arrest her friends in Cyprus for conspiracy.”

The barrister said the apparent confession was then dictated to her and investigators made clear that if she signed it she could return to her hotel, but if she refused she would be arrested.

“Further pressure was placed upon her to write the confession despite her stating that she did not want to. The confession was obtained under oppression given the threats made, that she was not cautioned, and that she was not given access to a lawyer as was her right under the Cypriot constitution and European convention on human rights,” Polak said.

Before being formally charged at 2.30am local time after eight hours of questioning, he claimed the teenager had sent text messages to friends saying police were preventing her from contacting anyone else. “[She] was not told that she could leave the police station nor given the option of leaving at any point,” Polak said.

The island’s police spokesman, Christos Andreou, rejected the Briton’s claims.

Calling the accusations “baseless”, he said: “The Cypriot police insist that the 19-year-old Briton freely asked to make a second deposition in which she retracted everything that she had claimed in the first she had made.”

He claimed it was impossible for the teenager to have conversed with friends via text message, as her mobile phone had been taken away from her as soon as she was arrested.

The woman’s lawyer, Andreas Pittadjis, last week asked for the case to be adjourned so he could gather evidence, including a video that had gone viral purporting to show several men having sex with the woman. He said the circulation of the video clip on the internet was “a much more serious offence than what my client faces”.

As diplomatic ties have warmed between the two countries, the Mediterranean island has become increasingly popular among young Israelis with many heading straight for Ayia Napa, which is famous for its all-night bars, sandy beaches and seemingly endless revelry. An estimated 1.3 million holidaymakers fly to the island from Britain each year.

Pittadjis would not reveal how the teenager will plead in court on Wednesday.