Labelling it a ‘deeply distressing case’, a Foreign Office spokesman said the issue would be raised with the Cypriot authorities, amid a fierce backlash to the verdict.

Earlier a court in Cyprus ruled that the Derbyshire woman, 19, lied about being sexually abused by up to 12 tourists at a hotel in Ayia Napa in mid-July.

The woman – who was on a working holiday – now faces a prison sentence for ‘causing public mischief’, after the guilty verdict at a court in the town of Paralimni.

She was arrested when police said she withdrew her accusation 10 days after the alleged attack. But lawyers for the British woman said she did so under duress, after nine hours of police questioning with no lawyer present.

The Israelis involved in the case denied any accusation of rape and were released 10 days after their arrest without charge, on the day the woman gave her retracting statement.

But throughout her four-month trial, she vehemently denied that the ordeal was made up and argued she was forced to sign a false confession following pressure from the Cypriot and Israeli authorities.

The individuals she had accused of assaulting her were not summoned to court because prosecutors considered it a case of public mischief and not rape.

In testimony in open court the defendant said she was in a hotel room with one of the Israeli teenagers with whom she had a relationship, before others appeared and she was pinned down.

Defence witness Marios Matsakis, a forensic pathologist who formerly worked for the state, said the woman’s injuries were consistent with rape.

Prosecutors said she fabricated the allegation and was angry at being filmed during sex.

Today protesters demonstrated outside the court in favour of the teen, carrying a sign reading ‘the rapist is you’.

And following the ruling, the hashtag #IBelieveHer began trending on Twitter.

Sophie Walker, the former leader of the Women’s Equality Party, tweeted: ‘Everything about this case is desperately wrong: shot through with misogyny, twisted by unfair process, celebrated by those with an anti-female agenda. #ibelieveher’.