Police authorities in Greece have reoppened the Ben Needham missing person file 20 years after the disappearance of the then 21-months-old boy in the island of Kos.

The boy’s mother, Kerry Grist met with investigators and a senior Greek prosecutor two weeks ago. The Greek officials ensured her that they would leave “no stone unturned” in the case. British police are also involved for the first time in the case. 

Little Ben went missing in 1991, and it is suspected he was snatched by a gypsy gang and sold to a childless couple.

“I feel at last that someone is going to help me. I went home for the first time feeling that Ben is not forgotten,” Kerry said yesterday at her home in Sheffield. “I know he is out there, not necessarily in Greece but somewhere in the world.

Ben’s dissapearance is one of the longest-running missing persons cases in British history but has never received the same level of publicity as Madeleine McCann’s 2007 disappearance in Portugal.

According to the most recent lead, a now retired gynaecologist Sotiris Papachristoforou had seen the young boy with a gypsy woman back then and was surprised because he knew the woman could not bear children and the boy was not a gypsy. The doctor reported his concerns to police at the time but they were not interested. He has now reported the incident again and Interpol is involved.

According to another lead, Ben had been abducted by a gypsy gang, taken to northern Greece and then on to Germany but the investigations came to no result.