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Brazilian “Nazi victim” charged

Zurich prosecutors have charged a Brazilian woman with misleading law-enforcement authorities in February after she faked an attack by neo-Nazis.

But prosecutors are seeking only a fine and not prison time if she is convicted of deception of justice. They did not say how high the fine could be.

Because the woman is contesting the charges, the case is expected to go to court. When this would be and whether the woman would have to appear herself is still to be confirmed.

In February police said the then 26-year-old lawyer claimed she had been attacked outside a Zurich train station by three skinheads, one with a Nazi symbol tattooed on the back of his head, and that the purported assailants cut the initials of the rightwing Swiss People’s Party into her stomach and legs, causing her to miscarry twins.

Pictures of her scarred body appeared in newspapers and Brazil’s foreign ministry raised the possibility that she was the victim of a xenophobic attack.

But after a series of tests police said the woman was not three months pregnant as she claimed, and a forensic specialist from Zurich University called it a “textbook case” of self-mutilation.

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