Greek Roma couple cleared:

A Greek court on Monday dropped childsnatching charges against a Roma couple at the centre of a media frenzy in 2013 when a little blonde girl named Maria was found in their camp.

The court in the central city of Larissa said it had insufficient evidence to further prosecute Christos Salis and his wife Eleftheria Dimopoulou, the state agency ANA said.

The couple did however receive suspended prison sentences for making a false statement to authorities about the girl’s parentage.

Four-year-old Maria made international headlines in 2013 when she was found living with the Roma couple who were not her parents in the Greek town of Farsala.

The girl was thought to be an abducted western European child until the Greek and Bulgarian authorities tracked down her real parents in Bulgaria, in a ghetto in the central town of Nikolaevo.

Sasha and Atanas Rusev admitted abandoning the girl as a seven-month-old baby in Greece in 2009, during a stay for seasonal work, because they were too poor to look after her.