ROMANIANS RELEASE COUPLE WHO TRIED TO SMUGGLE BABY

Philadelphia Inquirer, The (PA) 

A COURT OVERTURNS THE BRITONS' 28-MONTH PRISON SENTENCES. THEY WERE TOLD TO LEAVE THE COUNTRY.

Author: ASSOCIATED PRESS

Dateline: BUCHAREST, Romania

A British couple convicted of trying to smuggle a baby out of Romania were freed yesterday and ordered to leave the country.

A Bucharest court overturned the 28-month prison sentences given to Adrian and Bernadette Mooney, passed a suspended sentence, and ordered them out of the country.

The Mooneys, from Wokingham in southeastern England, were arrested in July as they tried to take 5-month-old Monica Baiaram across the Romanian-Hungarian border. The child was placed in an orphanage, and on Oct. 14 a court convicted the Mooneys of attempted illegal adoption and sentenced them to prison.

Bernadette Mooney, 40, smiled as she climbed into a British Embassy bus outside the court yesterday. The couple did not speak to the media.

The Mooneys, who legally adopted their 3-year-old daughter in Romania in 1991, say they paid $6,000 for various fees and did not know they were breaking the law. They said they put the baby in a cardboard box on the floor to keep her from rolling off the back seat, not to hide her.

A diplomatic wrangle between Romanian and British officials followed the Mooneys' conviction, but President Ion Iliescu promised to pardon the couple on a visit to Britain this month.

Thousands of adoptive parents went to Romania after the December 1989 overthrow of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, when it was disclosed that more than 100,000 children were languishing in state institutions.

Romania later tightened its adoption laws to clean up its image as a freewheeling baby market.