Journalists in Bulgaria are planning a candlelight vigil on Monday, October 8, following the murder and rape of their colleague, Victoria Marinova.
The body of the 30-year old TUV channel journalists, Marinova, was found on Sunday in Ruse, 300km northeast of Sofia.
Prosecutor Georgy Georgiev said Ms Marinova suffered blows to the head and was suffocated, while her “mobile phone, car keys, glasses and part of her clothes were missing,” the BBC reports.
Interior Minister Mladen Marinov confirmed to journalists that the victim had also been raped, according to Al-Jazeera. Prime Minister Boyko Borisov confirmed that DNA had been recovered and it was a matter of time for the police to arrest the perpetrator.
The representative of the OSCE Committee to Protect Journalists in Brussels, Tom Gibson, called on Bulgarian authorities to employ “all efforts and resources to carry out an exhaustive inquiry and bring to justice those responsible.”
According to the Bulgarian partner of the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) – the Bulgarian Bivol and Terminal 3 sites – Marinova was investigating a case of corruption involving EU funds.
Specifically, Ms Marinova had interviewed two investigative journalists, Dimitar Stoyanov and Attila Biro, two journalists arrested on September 13, while conducting this corruption investigation. The journalists had arrived on site while documents related to the case were being destroyed and were immediately arrested by the Bulgarian police. and kept in handcuffs for more than an hour. According to statements by Bulgarian investigative journalists to the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom, Bulgaria’s anti-mafia police appears to be consistently failing to respond to tips that would lead to successful prosecution.
The two journalists working for the Bivol.bg and the Romanian Rise Project websites had evidence of corruption and fraud involving big business and politicians.
Bulgaria ranks 111 out of 180 countries on the 2018 Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index. The country ranked 87th in 2013. In its criticism, the Paris-based organization suggests that investigative journalists in Bulgaria often suffer physical assaults and intimidation.