A Moldavian citizen holding a Bulgarian passport, who has been arrested on charges of murdering a prominent Russian television reporter has admitted to committing the crime.
Russian ITAR TASS reported that Moldova-born Igor Velchev admitted during the preliminary investigation that he killed NTV special correspondent Ilya Zimin. Velchev confessed that there was a quarrel and a fight between him and Zimin in Zimin's apartment in Moscow on February 25. The confession was the sufficient reason for opening a criminal case and issuing a 30-day arrest warrant, the Moldovian Prosecutor-General's Office said.
Velchev was wanted in connection with the March 26 killing but managed to evade authorities for close to two months.
Velchev was arrested late Thursday night in Moldova's town of Kagul, where he was hiding in a private apartment. For more than three months Velchev was in hiding in an abandoned house in Kagul under a false identity.
Colleagues of Zimin discovered his body in his Moscow apartment a day after he is thought to have died from head injuries. Police said there was no sign of forced entry to the apartment and prosecutors said nothing had been stolen. They ruled out any link between the murder and the reporter's work.