Investigative journalist found raped and murdered in Bulgaria

An investigative journalist was raped and murdered before being dumped by the Danube River. The body of Viktoria Marinova, 30, was discovered in Ruse, northern Bulgaria, on Saturday October 6. Police said the journalist, who presented two investigative programs on the town’s TV station, was brutally beaten, raped and strangled

Her mobile phone, car keys, glasses and some of her clothing were also found to be missing. Interior Minister Mladen Marinov said today that there is no evidence to suggest the killing was linked to Ms Marinova’s work.

He went on to state that the investigation was about ‘about rape and murder’. Ms Marinova was a director at TVN, a small TV station in Ruse, and presented two investigative programs. Her final show was about Attila Biro, a Romanian whistle-blower who leads the Rise Project Romania, probing into corruption



He and a colleague from Bulgarian site Bivol.bg were arrested in September during an investigation into the destruction of documents related to suspected fraud inside the European Union.  ‘We are in shock,’ a colleague of Ms Marinov from TVN told AFP under the condition of anonymity. ‘In no way, under any form, never have we received any threats – aimed at her or the television.’ The journalist, who now fears for his own safety, described Ms Mainova as ‘extremely disciplined, ambitious’ and said she was a ‘a person with an extreme sense of justice’.

A vigil for the journalist is being held in the Bulgarian capital today. TVN said in a statement: ‘With great pain and insurmountable grief the TVN’s team is experiencing the loss of our beloved colleague Victoria Marinova and we pray for sympathy to the sorrow of her relatives and colleagues.’ Ms Marinova is the third journalist to have been murdered in the European Union in a year. Daphne Caruana Galizia, who was investigating corruption, was killed when a bomb blew up her car in October 2017. While Slovak journalist Jan Kuciak was shot dead with his fiancée in February this year after looking into alleged political corruption linked to Italian organised crime.

Metro.

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