Couple arrested for buying Roma baby, as parents of abducted Maria found in Bulgaria

A Greek couple was arrested and charged for buying a baby from a Roma woman in the outskirts of Athens, authorities announced on Friday in a third case of illegal adoptions conducted by Roma revealed in a week in Greece. The 53-year old man and his 48-year-old wife are accused of having purchased the infant last spring for some 4,000 euros (5,510 U.S. dollars) from an unidentified woman in a Roma camp in the suburbs of Athens. According to police sources, they admitted the transaction, alleging that they could not have children of their own and failed to adopt legally. Police have started an investigation to trace the girl's biological parents. Meanwhile, media citing Bulgarian authorities reported on Friday that the biological parents of the first girl found a week ago in the care of a Roma couple in central Greece were confirmed by DNA tests to be another Roma couple in Bulgaria. The Greek Roma couple which has been charged with abduction of minor claims that the blue-eyed blonde girl named Maria had been willingly given to them by her Bulgarian Roma mother Sasha Ruseva upon birth four to five years ago, while she was working in Greece as a farm worker, because she could not raise her for financial reasons. Greek authorities have still not commented on the development, but according to sources from social services, the child who currently is being taken care bya Greek charity group could be handed over to Bulgarian social services for adoption. The case prompted a series of raids in Roma camps, checks in birth registration offices across Greece and an international search to find the biological parents. On Wednesday, another Roma couple was arrested on the eastern Aegean Sea island of Lesvos on similar charges of child abduction and trading. They narrated a similar story that the three-month-old boy found in their care had been entrusted to them by another unidentified Roma woman in Athens for financial reasons.