Missing Ben is the biggest mystery
BEN NEEDHAM remains Greece’s most infamous child abduction case, writes Jon Austin. Aged just 21 months, the toddler disappeared while on holiday with his family on the island of Kos in July, 1991.
He has never been found, but investigators believe he may have been kidnapped.
Ben had been playing near a farmhouse in Iraklis that his grandfather was renovating at the time.
In 2016, the inquiry took a twist when police said he may have been killed in an accident with heavy machinery working on the building site and then buried. But a dig in the same year failed to locate a body.
Last month DNA tests on blood found on a toy car unearthed during the search in 2016 ruled it was not from the child or any of his family.
Greece also has a history of illegal baby factories run by Albanian and Russian gangsters who get Roma girls to give birth to babies which are then sold on the black market to couples from the rest of Europe or further afield who cannot have children of their own.
Children are also abducted from Balkan countries like Romania and Bulgaria and trafficked through Greece to also be sold on to childless couples.
It is estimated around 3,000 children pass through Greece in this way each year.
The situation made world headlines in late 2013 when a blonde, blue-eyed girl who became known as Maria was found with a Roma couple at a camp in Farsala, central Greece.
It later emerged they had got her from a Roma couple in Bulgaria, but no charges were brought after it was said no money changed hands.