Brit lads who claimed to have made drunken trip to Syria from Ayia Napa admit it was a prank all along
Trio earlier said they only discovered they were in the war-ravaged Middle Eastern state when they tried to check in on Facebook
THREE Brit revellers who claimed to have ended up in SYRIA after boarding the wrong boat following a boozy night out in Ayia Napa have admitted it was a prank.
Pals Alex McCormick, 19, Lewis Ellis, 25, and James Wallman, 23, sent a series of social media posts claiming they ended up in the war-torn state after getting on a boat they believed to be going on a dolphin-watching trip.
But prankster Lewis admitted the claim – which has been reported around the world – was a big wind-up.
Replying to a post on his Facebook account, he wrote: “Hahaha what a prank.”
When a friend asked him if he made the story up, Lewis added: “Naaa we just made it up for fun.”
They earlier claimed to have received the shock of their lives when they ended up in the Syrian port of Tartus – 100 miles from Cyprus and barely 50 miles from the civil war-ravaged city of Homs.
Club rep Lewis, from Manchester, told the : “The last club closed at 7.30am so we just powered through to our 9am boat trip and ended up blagging our way on to the wrong boat.
“We were wearing boardshorts, hungover, looking like we were ready for a boat party.
“Everyone was foreign and it was pretty much half way out from the island when we asked ‘how come we’re so far away from land?'”
The trio had claimed they did not realise they were in the war-ravaged country, which is home to the terrorist group ISIS, until they tried to check in their location on Facebook.
Posting to the social media site, they wrote: “Thought we were going on a boat trip, turns out we were on a boat transfer & ended up in Syria #FakeBoatParty.”
Prankster Alex McCormick claimed his mum was “furious” with him after she fell for their group’s tall tale
Alex, from Colchester, Essex, added: “After hours and hours we turned up in this place and we were like, ‘What the f***, where are we?’
“We were panicking and saying to these guys ‘you need to turn around.'”
The group claimed bemused military officials are said to have met them in the dock and drove them to a nearby Russian naval base.
Alex went on to explain to how Syrian officials “fell about laughing” when they explained their bizarre reason for being in the country.
Alex added: “Eventually we found a translator and when we told him he just fell about laughing.
“We hung round in their quarters and they took pictures of us before we could get the boat back.”
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