NIKOLAEVO, Bulgaria —Sasha Ruseva, 35, had said she gave birth to a baby girl four years ago in Greece while working there as an olive picker but gave the child away because she was too poor to care for her. She has had two more children after Maria.
Maria has been in a charity’s care since authorities raided a settlement of Roma, also known as Gypsies, in Greece last week and found she was not related to the Greek Roma couple she was living with.
Related: Slow Saturday Special: Greece's Gypsy Migrants
Her discovery triggered a global search for her parents.
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The back story:
"Woman faces child-selling charges" by VESELIN TOSHKOV | Associated Press, October 25, 2013
SOFIA, Bulgaria — A Roma woman in Bulgaria has undergone DNA testing and faces preliminary charges of child selling as authorities investigate whether she is the mother of a young girl found living with an unrelated couple in Greece, authorities said Thursday.
Though the tests have yet to prove Sasha Ruseva, 35, is the biological mother of the girl known as Maria, the woman’s admission that she once left a baby behind in Greece opened her up to a formal investigation.
Ruseva acknowledged to Bulgarian TV that she had been questioned about the girl, believed to be 5 or 6 years old and found during a raid for drugs and weapons in a Roma camp in central Greece last week. The child’s case gained global notice and has drawn what human rights advocates say is unfair accusations in general against the Roma community, which has long faced racism and poverty.
Who notified us all?
Ruseva said she wanted the child back if tests prove she is the girl’s mother. But she denied taking any money for giving up her baby to another Roma, or Gypsy, family, years ago.
The preliminary charges filed against her allow authorities to start an investigation into whether money exchanged hands.
Greek authorities have taken custody of Maria.
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"Couple’s kidnap charges hint at Greek welfare fraud" by Nicholas Paphitis | Associated Press, October 22, 2013
ATHENS — Greek police on Monday released photographs of a couple charged with abducting a girl as an international search for the child’s biological parents intensified.
Authorities also scrambled to find fraudulent birth declarations related to possible welfare benefit scams involving the couple and others.
Investigators trying to establish how the girl known only as ‘‘Maria’’ came to be with the detained Roma couple are considering a range of potential scenarios, from child trafficking to even simple charity.
The suspects were identified as Christos Salis, 39, and a woman, 40, who used the names Eleftheria Dimopoulou and Selini Sali. They were arrested last week after police found the girl when they raided a Roma, or Gypsy, camp near Farsala.
A DNA test shows she is not the couple’s child....
Police say the two suspects received about $3,420 a month in subsidies from three cities to cheat the Greek welfare system....
Hey, that's the politicians' job!
Related: Greek ex-minister found guilty in corruption case
Photographs released of ‘‘Maria’’ have triggered a global outpouring of sympathy and possible tips to police but no breakthrough yet in identifying her or her parents.
The ‘‘Smile of the Child’’ charity, which is caring for the girl, said it had received more than 8,000 calls and thousands of e-mails — some with details and photographs of missing children — from people in the United States, Scandinavia, other parts of Europe, Australia, and South Africa.
‘‘The case has touched a chord with lots of people from many countries,’’ Panayiotis Pardalis, a spokesman for the charity. ‘‘This case is now giving hope to parents of missing children.’’
Like finding a needle in a haystack. Most of these child abduction rings are run by perverted elite and thus receive minimal coverage.
A dental exam showed the child is older than previously thought, 5 or 6 years old rather than 4, the charity said.
‘‘We had been seeking details for a girl aged 4. So the fact that she is older changes the nature of the search,’’ charity director Costas Yannopoulos said. ‘‘One thing that has impressed us is that the little girl is not asking for anyone . . . She is relaying the kindness she has been shown for the last three days to her dolls.’’
In Britain, tabloid newspapers drew parallels with missing girl Madeleine McCann, who disappeared at age 3 from a Portuguese resort six years ago.
Also see: Portugal reopens missing child case
Related: "PEDOPHILE RING KIDNAPPED MADELEINE"
The mother of Ben Needham, a British boy missing in Greece since 1991, said she was thrilled by the news of the girl’s recovery. Her toddler was 21 months old when he vanished.
Interpol, the international police agency, has 38 girls younger than 6 on its missing persons database but none of them reportedly fit the mystery girl’s description.
Police have raided dozens of Roma settlements across Greece in the last few weeks, including four more camps Monday in Athens and Thessaloniki.
The raids have triggered concern by human rights groups that the Roma community as a whole has been targeted.
‘‘I must say that we are flabbergasted with the hastiness, the hypocrisy . . . in all this affair,’’ said Gregory Valianatos, of the rights group Greek Helsinki Monitor. ‘‘Certainly we care about the [child]. . . But we are not prepared to see another pogrom in the name of law and order against Roma lifestyle.’’
Whatever excuse authority needs will do.
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Also see: Migrating Across Europe
Related:
"MIGRANTS RESCUED OFF ITALY -- Italian military personnel assisted migrants boarding the amphibious ship San Marco in the Mediterranean on Friday. More than 800 migrants were intercepted trying to cross the sea overnight, ANSA reported. Two Italian military vessels picked up about 400 people, and cargo and patrol boats rescued the others (Boston Globe October 26 2013)."
"Four dead after boat carrying apparent migrants capsizes off Florida coast | Associated Press, October 17, 2013
MIAMI BEACH — The fifteen people appeared to be making a perilous journey that thousands try each year. Migrants from Haiti, Cuba, and other Caribbean countries routinely attempt to illegally enter the United States by reaching Florida’s coast in overloaded or unseaworthy vessels, often through established smuggling networks that include islands in the Bahamas and Turks and Caicos....
Authorities didn’t immediately confirm that those on the boat that capsized Wednesday were migrants fleeing their home countries. However, the circumstances made it seem likely that they were part of a global phenomenon of people taking desperate risks to escape poverty and instability, said David Abraham, who teaches immigration law at the University of Miami School of Law. In two cases earlier this month, hundreds of migrants packed into smugglers’ boats capsized on their way from Africa to Italy.
Related: Sunday Globe Special: Australian Election
Make sure you check the bottom of the post, I mean boat.
Also see: Sailors capture 9 suspected pirates in the Indian Ocean
Related: Globe Promotes Captain Phillips
He's an admiral now?
‘‘It should be no surprise to anyone so long as the disparity between the poorest place in the Western Hemisphere and the richest place in the hemisphere is so grave and the distances covered are considered worth the risk,’’ Abraham said.
In the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, the Coast Guard picked up 508 Haitians and 1,357 Cubans at sea. Since the new fiscal year began Oct. 1, the Coast Guard has picked up 93 Haitians and 117 Cubans.
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I suppose now is a good time to bring up Cuba's cholera crisis.
Related: Sunday Globe Special: World's Worst Cholera Crisis
Still is, but don't hold your breath waiting for coverage.
If I didn't know better I would swear my jewsmedia is racist.
See:
Related:
Maybe they just don't like little boys being abused, huh?
