Pale, blonde and blue-eyed, the 4-year-old girl looks shyly into the camera.
This is no ordinary photo, though. The little girl pictured is at the center of a mystery.
Police in Greece say they found her Thursday with a Roma couple posing as her parents but have no idea who she is or where her real parents are.
They hope releasing the pictures of her might prompt people to come forward with information.
The girl was discovered during a search of a home in a community of Roma, also known as gypsies, near the town of Larissa in central Greece, police said.
Photo blog: The plight of the Roma
Police first became suspicious because the girl, who is blonde with very pale skin and blue eyes, did not resemble the couple who claimed to be her parents.
When the couple were then questioned, “they changed repeatedly their story about how they got the child,” a police statement said, compounding the officers’ suspicions.
DNA testing then “showed that there was not any genetic compatibility” between the girl and the 39-year-old man and the 40-year-old woman, the police said, meaning they cannot be her biological parents.
The girl was immediately taken from the couple and entrusted to the care of a charity called The Smile of the Child. The charity said it would look after her “until a solution in the best interest of the child is found.”
The two people posing as her parents have been arrested and face charges of abducting a minor, as well as counts of falsifying identity documents, said the state-owned Athens-Macedonian News Agency.
Among the suspect documents found by police was a 2009 birth and baptism registration from Athens authorities, the news agency said.
