A 47-year-old Bulgarian woman has been found dead in the Greek capital Athens.

The body belongs to Vanya Angelova, a native of the northwestern Bulgarian city of Vidin.

According to the Greek police, Angelova committed suicide but her relatives claim that she was murdered, the Greece-based Bulgarian-language newspaper "Bulgarian News" reported Monday.

The body was found by another Bulgarian woman who saw it in the yard of an apartment building.

Angelova's children have complained that the Greek police has not let them identify the body for five days, even though they went to Athens, but were notified that an autopsy was performed on their mother's body regardless of the fact that they had not given their consent for that.

To make matters worse, a Greek funeral agency has taken hold of the body, and is demanding EUR 1 300 to let them see it.

The Greek police are quoted as saying that they are investigating a suicide as the injuries on the body indicated that she fell from the nearby building.

Velizar Kamenov, a Bulgarian man that Angelova had been living with in Athens, for the past 4 years, does not accept their conclusions. He said she recently visited him in the Greek countryside, where he currently works, 2 weeks ago, and seemed totally happy.

The Bulgarian Embassy in Athens has talked to the relatives of the woman, and has asked the Foreign Ministry in Sofia for instructions, the 24 Chasa daily reported.

The press adds that the large Bulgarian immigrant community in Greece is stirred by the most recent case of a violent death of a Bulgarian, after last year the leader of the Bulgarian community in Athens, Rosen Hristov, was found murdered. He was later buried in Athens because he relatives were unable to raise enough money to transport his body to Bulgaria.

Another Bulgarian, Petko Atanasov, was beaten to death in downtown Athens in an unrelated case. The Bulgarian immigrants have complained that the investigations of the two cases have produced no results.