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Asylum seekers mutilate hands to avoid Eurodac

01 March 2004

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Swedish officials have admitted that hundreds of fingerprints taken from asylum seekers have showed signs of injuries, pointing to the fact that asylum seekers have turned to mutilating their hands through cutting and burning. An asylum seeker interviewed on Swedish radio said he burnt his fingers repeatedly over the stove. Around 5% of the 26,000 sets of fingerprints that the Swedish Migration Board has taken since January 2003 were not legible for identification. Brengt Hellstroem, an "identity expert" from the Migration Board thought that the mutilation was not very dramatic because: "It is very easy to mutilate and you don't do any lasting damage...You really only destroy the outer layers of the skin and barely have time to register the pain. The pain you feel for that short period is perhaps worth it to be able to stay in Sweden your entire life." Hellstroem's call is that more stringent checks such as biometric identity checks with iris scanning should be implemented.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3593895.stm, http://www.news24.com/News24/World/News/0,,2-10-1462_1507421,00.html

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