News
(Sofia) “We are shocked at the news of the death of Victoria Marinova, accounts manager and TV host for local TV Tvn-Russe”: this has been said to SIR by Irina Nedeva, president of the Bulgarian section of the Association of European Journalists. The dead body of the thirty-year-old woman who was jogging along the river was found at Russe, a city on the Danube, on Saturday afternoon. Before being killed, Marinova was raped and strangled. There are no suspects yet, even if the police are pursuing all lines of enquiry. “We ask – Nedeve explains – to have an effective, quick investigation and to have the people who committed such a brutal murder committed to justice”. In her opinion, “detectives should not rule out any line of enquiry, including the one connected with the victim’s job”. Nedeva also states that, “at the same time, before having real evidence in our hands, it is inacceptable to speculate about the accident having to do with press freedom in Bulgaria or not”. However, the Bulgarian media do not think the journalist was very likely killed because of her job. Marinova had taken up journalism in early 2018 and was not an investigative journalist. Even if many foreign news websites mention the last episode of her TV show “Detektor”, which is about an investigation of corruption and European funds.
