LAUSR

A 30-year-old male refugee from Syria (Aleppo) was examined as part of a medical visit for refugees. He presented various cutaneous lesions associated with acts of torture in his home country [1]: numerous hypertrophic, hyperpigmented scars were clearly limited to the trunk and four limbs that were associated with direct traumatic lesions, as well as cigarette burns to the skin and mucous membrane. On both hands, the fingerprints had been almost completely effaced from the pulp at the tips of all 10 fingers (Fig. 1). The patient initially claimed that this abnormality had been caused by direct and prolonged contact with solvents (such as acetone and white spirit) during physical labour in the oil industry during a prolonged stay in Libya. Given the incoherence of this statement, he finally explained that he had deliberately burnt away the fingerprints on both hands using sulphuric acid in order to avoid being included in the nominative databases of southern European countries (Italy,