Brazilian “Nazi victim” sentenced

Zurich prosecutors have given a Brazilian woman a SFr10,800 ($10,400) conditional fine after she faked an attack by neo-Nazis earlier this year.

The woman’s lawyer had argued for an acquittal, claiming the woman had total amnesia of the incident and could therefore not be found guilty. The judge pointed out that in her first interrogation the Brazilian had made a detailed statement

Prosecutors had not been seeking a prison sentence.

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. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva condemned what he called “remarkable violence”.

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.

She was handed down the conditional fine for the misleading the law-enforcement authorities.

swissinfo.ch and agencies