Daily Stormer The Most Censored Publication in History
USA Today
October 22, 2013
An unknown little blond girl found living in a Roma camp with a couple who are not her parents has opened an international hunt for her real mother and father and sparked age-old anger against Gypsies who are among the poorest people in Europe.
Police in Greece have released photographs of a couple charged with abducting a girl known “Maria” and taken them into pre-trial custody.
An international search for the young girl’s parents has intensified.
A 39-year-old man and a 40-year-old woman, identified as Christos Salis and Eleftheria Dimopoulou, were detained Monday on charges of abduction and document fraud following their arrest last week. Police raided a Roma encampment near the central Greek town of Farsala and found the girl, who a DNA test has shown is not the couple’s child.
“This story shocked me,” said Vassilis Sarantidis, 37, a civil engineer in Athens. “We all see on the streets how the Roma use their children — they hit them, they force them to beg. They must all be investigated.”
But the couple insists they were given the child by a destitute mother and some people are warning Greeks not to give in to bigotry over a child whose story is being sensationalized in the press.
“The allegation that Roma steal children is a long-lasting myth about the Roma minority,” said Andreas Hieronymus, a researcher at the European Network Against Racism based in Hamburg, Germany.
The case has triggered a global outpouring of sympathy and possible tips to police about the case but no breakthrough yet in identifying the child.
Thousands of people have called the Smile of the Child charitable group that has been caring for the girl, named Maria, to ask about her welfare and give tips on who she may be. She remains unidentified, and the group said a dental exam indicates she is 4 to 6 years old.
She was found during a police raid on a Roma, or Gypsy, settlement near Farsala in central Greece, where many residents try to make a living selling fruits, blankets, baskets and shoes. Police were looking for suspects for gun-running, drug dealing and other crimes.
The couple claimed they were the girl’s biological parents, but because her appearance was so different from the adults, the girl was given a DNA test that confirmed she did not belong to them.
The couple appeared Monday before an investigating judge in Larissa to face criminal charges of child abduction, which carries a maximum 10-year prison sentence.
Both denied the charges. They say they adopted the child when she was just days old and were motivated by charity, after being approached by an intermediary for a destitute foreign mother who reportedly could not afford to raise the child, Greek newspapers reported their lawyer as saying.
Police allege the woman said she gave birth to six children in less than 10 months, while 10 of the 14 children the couple had registered as their own were not found. Investigators said it is unclear whether all the children exist or were falsified to qualify for child care payments from the Greek welfare system.
Police say the two suspects received about $3,420 a month in subsidies from three different cities where they had registered the children.
The couple has been charged with illegally obtaining official documents such as birth records. The man also faces separate charges, together with other people from the settlement, for allegedly possessing an illegal firearm and drug-related offenses.
Greek police have also sought assistance from Interpol, the international police agency, which has 38 girls younger than 6 on its missing persons database. None of them, however, fit the girl’s description and the agency only receives cases when member governments seek its help.
