DNA tests have shown a Bulgarian Roma couple ARE the biological parents of the "blonde angel" Maria who was rescued from a Greek gypsy camp.

DNA tests have shown a Bulgarian Roma couple ARE the biological parents of the "blonde angel" Maria who was rescued from a Greek gypsy camp.

Greece girl Maria's mum: 'I have many children so I sold some and gave others away'
Sasha Ruseva was tracked down to a squalid shanty town in the centre of Bulgaria, 300 miles from where the fair-skinned blue-eyed youngster was found last week.

Bulgarian prosecutors are now investigating whether the 40-year-old agreed to sell her daughter in Greece, an accusation she denies.

Real mum: Sasha Ruseva
Rex



The case has come to illustrate the plight of Roma gypsies in Bulgaria, many of whom have spent their lives in poverty, are illiterate and have been marginalised by society.

Four-year-old Maria was found last week hiding under a blanket at a Roma settlement in central Greece. DNA tests showed the Roma couple she was with were not her real parents.

Maria, whose case has drawn parallels with the disappearance of 3-year-old Briton Madeleine McCann in 2007, is being looked after by a Greek charity, which says it has received over 10,000 calls with leads or from parents of missing children.

Rescued: Maria was found in a Greek gypsy camp
AFP/Getty

 
Sasha already had two children and was picking olives in the coastal town of Livanates, Greece, when she fell pregnant in 2008, it was claimed today.

Unable to cope, Sasha is thought to have sold the unwanted tot to the highest bidders - a group of child traffickers.

A mysterious Bulgarian middleman known as 'Michalis' and his prostitute partner then offered baby Maria around central Greece before her adoptive gypsy parents paid 1,000 Euro to keep her.




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