Two charged with abducting girl, police search for parents
Print Edition
Police in Greece have released photographs of a couple charged with abducting a girl known as “Maria” and taken them into pre-trial custody.
An international search for the young girl’s parents has intensified.
A 39-year-old man and a 40-year-old woman, identified as Christos Salis and Eleftheria Dimopoulou, were detained yesterday on charges of abduction and document fraud following their arrest last week.
Both denied the charges.
Police raided a Roma encampment near the central Greek town of Farsala and found the girl, who is not the couple’s child according to a DNA test.
The case has triggered a global outpouring of sympathy and possible tips to police about the case but no breakthrough yet in identifying the child.
Greek investigators are considering everything from potential child trafficking to welfare scams or even simple charity as they seek the child’s biological parents.
The “Smile of the Child” charity, which is caring Maria until her parents are found, said a dental examination showed she is older than previously thought — 5-6 years old instead of four.
The charity has received more than 8,000 calls and thousands of emails about her from people from the US, Scandinavia and other parts of Europe, Australia and South Africa.
“The case has touched a chord with lots of people from many countries,” said Panayiotis Pardalis, a spokesman for the charity. “This case is now giving hope to parents of missing children.”
He said the charity has received photos of missing children and potentially connected cases, “which we are forwarding to the police,” but mostly people were just conveying their concern.
Greek police have sought assistance from Interpol, the international police agency, which has 38 girls younger than 6 on its missing persons database.
None of them, however, fit the mystery girl’s description.
The story has resonated particularly in Britain, where the tabloid press drew parallels with missing girl Madeleine McCann, who disappeared at age three from a Portuguese resort six years ago. The mother of Ben Needham, a British boy missing in Greece since 1991, said she was thrilled by the news of the mystery girl’s recovery. Her toddler was 21 months old when he vanished on the island of Kos.
The girl was found last week in a Gypsy, or Roma, settlement near Farsala in central Greece as police searched for drugs, firearms and fugitives. The blond, blue-eyed child was strikingly unlike the couple she lived with and a later DNA test showed she was not their child.
Last week Salis and Dimopoulou had claimed they adopted the child while she was just days old.
A defense lawyer said they were motivated by charity after being approached by an intermediary for a destitute foreign mother.
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