Bulgarian charged over journalist death
A BULGARIAN man has been detained in Germany over the rape and murder of television journalist Viktoria Marinova, officials said yesterday, as Prime Minister Boyko Borissov said journalists in Bulgaria had total freedom to write and report.
The suspect was arrested on Tuesday at the request of Bulgaria, Interior Minister Mladen Marinov told a news briefing attended by Borissov and the country’s chief prosecutor.
He has been charged over the killing and Bulgarian authorities were expecting Germany to extradite him to Bulgaria, Chief Prosecutor Sotir Tsatsarov said.
The Interior Ministry of the German state of Lower Saxony confirmed that a 20-year old suspect has been arrested in the city of Stade in the home of relatives’ on Tuesday night and was due to be brought before a magistrate yesterday.
The body of the 30-year-old journalist, who police said had been raped, beaten and suffocated, was found on Saturday.
On her last TV show, on September 30, Marinova introduced two journalists who were investigating suspected corruption involving EU funds and said her own show, “Detector,” on local television station NTV, would carry out similar investigations. No link has been established to her work so far and Borissov criticized Bulgarians who he said had rushed to mention Bulgaria along with Malta and Slovakia, where journalists had been killed recently for their work.
Daphne Caruana Galizia, Malta’s best-known investigative reporter, was killed when a bomb blew up her car in October last year and Slovak journalist Jan Kuciak was shot dead in February. Borissov said journalists in Bulgaria had “total freedom to write and report on any topic.”
The suspect was identified as Severin Krasimirov from Ruse, who lived near the park where Marinova’s body was found. He left the country on Sunday, the interior minister said. Chief Prosecutor Tsatsarov said he could not say at this stage if the murder was linked to her work as a journalist. The collected evidence so far pointed to a spontaneous attack, he said.