A British teenager has for the first time described in explicit detail how she was allegedly gang-raped by a group of Israeli tourists in Cyprus – an assault that police and prosecutors say she invented.

The young woman says she was raped by the Israelis in a hotel room in the beach resort of Ayia Napa in July.

Two weeks later, after an eight-hour questioning by Cypriot police without a lawyer, she signed a retraction statement in which she said she concocted the story.

Twelve Israeli men who had been arrested for the alleged attack were immediately released and allowed to fly home.

She is on trial in a court room in Paralimni, a town a few miles from Ayia Napa, for causing public mischief with the allegedly false claim and faces up to a year in prison if found guilty.