Three Roma were being questioned on suspicion of kidnapping a baby after attempting to register the child with authorities on the Greek island of Lesbos, a police source said.
A 51-year-old woman, her son, 21, and a woman aged 19 were taken in for questioning after arriving at the local authority with false documentation for a baby aged two and a half months, said Panagiotis Kordonouris, police chief for the North Aegean region yesterday.
"They were arrested as they were trying to register the child with fake documents," he said.
Kordonouris said the trio eventually admitted the child was not theirs and said the baby was given to them in central Athens at the end of July by another Roma woman.
The case comes as security services are on high alert after a young blonde girl named Maria was found by police last week in a Roma camp near the town of Farsala in central Greece.
Initially thought to be four years old, but according to media confirmed from dental checks to be five or six, she was kept by a Roma couple who were placed in pre-trial detention on Monday for allegedly abducting her.
The three suspects in the Lesbos case will appear before a prosecutor today, the police chief said.
