SOFIA: DNA tests confirmed yesterday a Bulgarian Roma couple living in dire poverty as the biological parents of Maria, a mystery blond girl discovered last week in a Greek Roma camp.
“DNA samples showed that Sasha Ruseva is the biological mother and Atanas Rusev is the biological father of the child called Maria,” Bulgaria’s interior ministry chief of staff Svetlozar Lazarov told reporters.
“A pre-trial probe was opened on the case against (the mother) for allegedly agreeing to sell her child in Greece in 2009,” he added.
The interior ministry and the prosecution have yet to decide if the parents — who have nine other children and live in the Roma ghetto of the town of Nikolaevo in central Bulgaria —will be detained, the official said.
Green-eyed Maria was found living with a Greek Roma couple in a camp near the town of Farsala last Wednesday, sparking global news interest and hundreds of enquiries from parents of missing children.
DNA tests showed that the 39-year-old man and 40-year-old woman taking care of her were not her real parents.
The couple were accused of abducting the child, prompting an international appeal for help finding her parents.
The two denied the accusations, saying that the little girl was voluntarily handed over to them by her Bulgarian Roma mother who could not care for her.
Following reports in the Greek media pointing to the identity of the mother, Bulgarian police tracked down on Thursday the Bulgarian Roma couple from Nikolaevo.
The woman, Sasha Ruseva, 35, told police that she had given birth to a baby girl while working in Greece several years ago and left it there with her Greek employers when it was seven months old, the interior ministry said.
AFP
