Bulgarian couple claim Maria is their daughter
The woman, Sasha Ruseva, was quoted as saying that desperate poverty had forced her to leave behind a baby in Greece and that Maria looked like she might be hers. “There is a resemblance, but how should I know if she is mine or not?” the thin, dark-complexioned Ruseva told reporters, clutching a small, freckled and pale-skinned child of two or three with dyed red hair.
“I don’t know if she is mine or not mine,” she said outside the police station in the town of Gurkovo in central Bulgaria, saying she had “not eaten and am sick” since seeing television images of Maria.
She said that she had given her child, reported to have been born in Greece several years ago, to another woman when the girl was aged around seven months, but denied money changed hands.
She said she would take her back if DNA tests confirmed that she was indeed her mother.
Prosecutors said only that a woman with the initials S.Zh.R. was being investigated for allegedly selling her child in Greece in 2009, and that it had ordered a DNA analysis.
“The investigation was opened after an inquiry conducted in relation to a female child named Maria found in Greece,” a statement said.
According to reports in Bulgaria, Ruseva and her husband Atanas Rusev have between eight and 10 children, five of whom are blonde. Greek news portal Zougla said Ruseva gave birth to a girl on Jan 31, 2009, in the town of Lamia in central Greece, about 150km from the camp where Maria was discovered last week.
However, dental checks on Maria indicate an age of five or six, according to the Greek charity entrusted with her care.
Lamia Mayor George Kotronias told Zougla that Ruseva tried to register her daughter by falsely claiming she was unmarried, and that her application had been rejected.
The Greek Roma couple looking after Maria, a 39-year-old man and his 40-year-old wife, were detained but say the child’s Roma mother gave them the child because she could not afford to look after her.
The head of the Roma Rights Centre, Dezideriu Gergely, said many Roma communities in Europe do not have dark skin, have blue or green eyes, or are of mixed race. “Creating the perception that ethnicity can be linked to criminality is discriminatory. The effects of this not only fuel racist stereotypes but are potentially disastrous,” said Amnesty International.
