Brazil trafficker fingered thanks to birth defect

[the_poet]

SAO PAULO — You could say his fingerprints -- all 12 of them -- were all over the crime. An accused drug-trafficker was nabbed by police in Brazil's southern state of Santa Catarina after they confirmed his identity through the betrayal of a rare birth defect: six fingers on each hand.

"We had indications that it was him, but because he presented his brother's papers as identification we had no proof," police commissioner Enio de Oliveira Matos told Globo's news website G1.

"Given this peculiarity, we requested information from the Institute of Identification in the state of Parana, where he was born, and with this feature, it was possible to confirm his identity."

G1 published photographs of the hands of the detained man, who had been wanted for drug trafficking in the state of Mato Grosso.

Source: AFP