Maria: Greek Roma couple charged with abduction

A Roma couple have been formally charged in
Greece with abducting a young blonde girl, and
they have been placed in detention pending a
trial.
The girl, named Maria, was found during a raid on a
Roma camp in central Greece last week.
DNA tests showed that she was not related to the
couple, who insist they were given her legitimately.
Maria is being cared for by a charity in Athens, which
has received more than 8,000 calls after an appeal.
The Roma couple appeared before judges on Monday
to answer charges of abducting a minor and holding
false papers.
The 39-year-old man and 40-year-old woman were
identified by Greek police as Christos Salis and
Eleftheria Dimopoulou.
The Roma couple were identified as Christos Salis (R)
and Eleftheria Dimopoulou (L)
The Roma community where the girl was found has
rallied around the couple, saying they looked after her
well.
The head of the Roma association in Farsala in central
Greece says the pair treated her better than their
biological children and that she loved them.
The brother of the man claiming to be Maria's adoptive
father repeated the defence that she had been given to
them lawfully after her birth, says the BBC's Mark
Lowen in Athens.
Ahead of Monday's hearing, a lawyer representing the
Roma couple, Kostas Katsavos, said that they were
carrying out a search for the girl's mother.
He said the couple claim the woman had given Maria to
them because she could not look after her daughter.
"Our clients' claim is that 'we never abducted this
child, we just adopted her' in a way that was not legal,
that we can confess," said Mr Katsavos.
But the couple are suspected by social workers of
kidnapping the girl and sending her out to beg, or
involving her in a sex ring.
Police initially raided the Roma camp to search for
drugs and weapons.
They noticed the lack of resemblance between the
blonde-haired, blue-eyed, pale-skinned little girl and
her parents, and found further discrepancies when
they investigated the family's documents.
The Smile of the Child charity told the BBC that medical
examinations show Maria is in fact either five or six
years old and not four as was previously reported, after
a birth certificate was found to be a forgery.
'Great hope'
The couple had registered different numbers of
children with different regional family registries.
An appeal has been launched throughout Europe
The Greek authorities say the couple were in possession
of false papers which suggested the woman had given
birth to six children within a 10-month period.
When questioned about how they came to have Maria,
the couple made "constantly changing claims",
Thessalia Province Police Director Vassilis Halatsis said.
Through Interpol, Greece has requested assistance
from other European countries.
Police decided to appeal internationally as the girl
looked as if she might be from northern or eastern
Europe.
The case has also brought a response from two families
in the UK with long-missing children.
Ben Needham from Sheffield disappeared aged 21
months while on a family holiday on the Greek island
of Kos in 1991. His sister said the discovery of the
blonde-haired girl in central Greece gave them "great
hope".
A spokesman for Kate and Gerry McCann, whose three-
year-old daughter Madeleine went missing in Portugal
in 2007, said the case also gave them hope that she
would one day be found alive.





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