Watch FIFA World Cup 2026™

LIVE, FREE and EXCLUSIVE

DNA confirms Greece mystery girl's parents

DNA tests confirmed that a Bulgarian Roma couple are the biological parents of Maria, the blonde girl found in a Greek Roma camp last week, an interior ministry official said overnight.

A four-year-old girl found during a routine search of a Roma camp.
A Roma couple will appear in a Greek court over the suspected abduction of a four-year-old girl. (AAP)

"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.

The girl, aged somewhere between four and six, was found living with a Greek Roma couple in a camp near the town of Farsala.

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 girl, amid an international effort to find here real parents that gave hopes to hundreds of missing children parents across the world.

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 a Bulgarian Roma couple from the central town of Nikolaevo, and questioned them on the Maria case.

The woman, Sasha Ruseva, 35, told police she had given birth to a baby girl while working in Greece several years ago and left it there when it was seven months old, the interior ministry said.

Ruseva has said she was not completely certain that Maria was her child but that she resembled some of her other nine children - also blond, fair-skinned and light-eyed.

The woman said she was ready to take Maria back if DNA tests confirmed that she was her real mother.


2 min read

Published

Updated

Source: AAP, AFP



Share this with family and friends


Get SBS News straight to your inbox

Sign up now for daily news from Australia and around the world. You can also subscribe to Insight's weekly newsletter for in-depth features and first-person stories.

By subscribing, you agree to SBS’s terms of service and privacy policy including receiving email updates from SBS.

Follow SBS News

Download our apps

Listen to our podcasts

Get the latest with our News podcasts on your favourite podcast apps.

Watch on SBS

SBS World News

Take a global view with Australia's most comprehensive world news service

Watch now

Watch the latest news videos from Australia and across the world