A case has been filed with the independent police complaints authority regarding a Somali woman who reported she had been mistreated and suffered racist behaviour at the hands of police officers in Nicosia, it emerged on Friday.

Head of migrant and refugee watchdog Kisa, Doros Polykarpou, speaking to CyBC, accused authorities of dragging their heels in investigating the complaint.

Polykarpou said the woman had been taken in and held by police after she was attacked under the assumption she was drunk, although as she explained she is a practising Muslim.

Instead of helping her calm down as the victim of an attack, the police chose to take the word of two Greek Cypriots at the scene [the alleged attackers] and talk in Greek, he said.

“We have tried to speak for two days with the police in an earnest effort to make sure all the facts were known by them, and we encountered a wall,” Polykarpou added.

According to Kisa, the woman’s case had been handled badly even after she visited the hospital with her husband the next day, whereupon the treating doctor certified her injuries as a result of violence, and counselled her to get a referral for investigation of the perpetrators.

The officers at the police station simply took the paper from the doctor and told her it was “sufficient”, Polykarpou said.

Moreover, when Kisa rang the station in an effort to clarify information for the couple, the station’s officers told the NGO they ought to “get a lawyer involved” if they had a problem and questioned Kisa’s getting in touch.

Eventually the station’s chief assured Kisa that the incident had been looked into and handled, and that the couple could return to file a report about the attack.

However, once Kisa informed the couple and they returned to the station, they were told that the station was understaffed, and they would be notified on Saturday if they should come again.

“This is not an isolated incident, we have the similar situation in Limassol and other reports where victims will contact the police and get no result and are not treated with dignity and the requisite attention,” Polykarpou said.

The incident unfolded on Tuesday night in downtown Nicosia.

Thirty-year-old Kamga Kengne had been expecting his wife, Hobo Suleban, to return by bus from a doctor’s visit, when instead he received a call from his brother-in-law that she had been beaten on the street and afterwards held for hours in a cell at the police station.

According to Kengne, his wife and her brother had entered a coffee shop in downtown Nicosia, where he had asked to use the toilet.

The employee had rudely refused and told them to get out.

When Hobo allegedly questioned the employee’s insulting behaviour the latter called on two patrons sitting outside to help get rid of the pair.

The situation verbally escalated and the two men allegedly punched Hobo and her brother, leaving her bruised and bloody. Hobo herself called the police to the scene to report what had occurred.

She was finally released around midnight while it is alleged that the perpetrators suffered no consequences.

The office of the Human Rights’ Commissioner assured the Cyprus Mail on Wednesday that the complaint was being investigated.