Greek plea over mystery girl found in Roma gypsy camp

Greek police are investigating the identity of a four-year-old girl found living with a Roma couple in central Greece, on suspicion that the child may have been abducted from her parents.

The girl was found on Wednesday at a Roma settlement near Farsala in central Greece during a police sweep of the settlement for suspected drug trafficking.

Police became suspicious because the blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl bore no resemblance to the couple claiming to be her parents, and the couple changed their story about how they got the child several times under questioning.

“The girl looks Scandinavian or could be Bulgarian,” said a police official who declined to be named. “It is either a case of abduction or trafficking.”

DNA tests confirmed the child was not their offspring. Police are preparing criminal charges for abducting a minor and securing documents under false reasons.

The Daily Mirror reported that the woman arrested alongside her partner claimed she was given the youngster two years ago by a Romanian woman to look after while she went shopping and she never came back.

“We didn’t harm her. We love her and she loves us… we gave her everything we could, like we do for our other children,” she said.

Frightened and neglected

“We didn’t harm her. We love her and she loves us… we gave her everything we could, like we do for our other children,” she said

The girl is now in the custody of The Smile of the Child organisation and a prosecutor has asked that her photographs be published to help find her true parents.

The charity said that the girl was frightened and neglected when she arrived in their care but that in overall good health and was now more relaxed.

It said it had received many calls since the appeal was launched.

A spokesman for the British couple Kate and Gerry McCann, whose daughter Madeleine went missing in Portugal in 2007, said the case gave them “great hope” that she would one day be found alive.

Gave birth to six children in ten months

Police said the 40-year old purported mother was found to have two different identification documents and two different family registries, one showing her as the mother of five girls and a boy and the other as the mother of four girls.

The registries showed she had given birth to six children within a period of less than 10 months.

A City of Athens statement complained that “extremely problematic and antiquated” Greek law allows people to register babies as their own on the basis of one person’s declaration backed by two witnesses. The statement said that, in practice, parents can delay registering their children until they turn 18.