Bound woman 'faked the incident': police

The woman found tied up and gagged next to a Swedish motorway on Tuesday is not the victim of any crime, having staged the incident herself, according to police reports.

• Woman found bound and gagged by motorway (30 Nov 11)

“After being questioned for three hours the woman changed her story and admitted it was fake,” said Christer Nordström of the Uppsala police to daily Svenska Dagbladet (SvD).

The Local reported on Wednesday that a 24-year-old woman had been found on the side of the E4 southbound outside of Uppsala at around 9.40pm on Tuesday evening.

The woman had seemingly been dumped from a car and was found leaning against a fence by the side of the road. She was immediately taken to hospital and an interpreter was found to enable police to glean from the woman what had happened.

Police followed up on a lead regarding a white van during Wednesday and three people were later detained pending questioning.

But the woman cracked during police interrogation and revealed that the whole incident was a scam. According to police she left a full account of why she had acted as she did.

“But considering her personal circumstances we have chosen not to comment on that,” Nordström told SvD.

Local paper Upsala Nya Tidning (UNT) reported that the woman comes from Mongolia and that she is seeking asylum in Sweden.

The police told SvD that they had deployed a lot of resources into the investigation, as they had had no reason to believe that the woman was lying.

She has now been released by police and according to SvD, authorities will on Friday decide whether or not to charge her.