Police find suspected mother in Roma case

NIKOLAEVO, Bulgaria — Bulgarian police have identified a couple they suspect are the natural parents of a child found in a Roma camp in Greece, and prosecutors are investigating the woman for allegedly selling her child, officials said Thursday.

Last week’s discovery of a young girl named Maria sparked a global search for her biological parents after DNA tests showed the Roma couple are not her blood relatives.

Bulgarian police questioned Sashka Ruseva and her husband, Atanas Rusev, on Thursday in the southern town of Nikolaevo. The couple are also Roma.

“The prosecutors’ office has opened a pre-trial investigation against S.R. for agreeing to sell her child on an undisclosed date in 2009 in Greece,” the regional prosecutor’s office in the southern town of Kazanlak said in a statement.

Also Thursday, Portuguese prosecutors ordered police to reopen their investigation of the 2007 disappearance of Madeleine McCann, a 3-year-old British girl who went missing from a resort in the Algarve region, local and British media reported.

British investigators reopened their official probe of the child’s disappearance in July. After distributing computergenerated images of two men wanted for questioning, they received more than 2,400 phone calls and emails with tips and fresh leads.

Portuguese authorities had declined to reopen their investigation, which was closed in 2008 without charges being brought against any suspects.