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Pacemaker<\/p>\nPacemaker<\/p>\n
Attempted rape charges against two Romanian teenagers, that sparked widespread racially-motivated riots across Northern Ireland, have been withdrawn.<\/p>\n
The boys, aged 14 and 15, were accused of attempting to rape a schoolgirl in Ballymena, County Antrim on 7 June.<\/p>\n
In a previous court hearing there were claims that the girl was dragged down an alleyway into a garage, but escaped when her would-be attackers were disturbed and ran off.<\/p>\n
However, the Public Prosecution Service was granted permission to end criminal proceedings against the pair due to “significant evidential developments”, at Belfast Youth Court on Friday.<\/p>\n
The teenagers will now be released from the juvenile detention centre where they have been held for more than five months.<\/p>\n
Another youth, who is suspected to be involved in the alleged attack, is believed to have fled to Romania the next day. <\/p>\n
None of the accused can be identified because of their ages.<\/p>\n
Following the alleged assault widespread racially-motivated took place in the town before spreading to other parts of Northern Ireland.<\/p>\n
Test for prosecution ‘no longer met’<\/p>\n
A PPS spokesperson said: “We have recently been made aware of significant evidential developments in this case. <\/p>\n
“In light of this new evidence, it has been determined that the test for prosecution is no longer met on evidential grounds, and therefore the case should not proceed.<\/p>\n
“The prosecution team and the police investigation team met with the complainant and her family this morning to explain the reasons for the decision.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pacemaker Attempted rape charges against two Romanian teenagers, that sparked widespread racially-motivated riots across Northern Ireland, have been…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":318661,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4,450,451,3,452,453],"class_list":{"0":"post-318660","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-headlines","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-top-stories","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=318660"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318660\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/318661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=318660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=318660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=318660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}