A 78-year-old prisoner, known as the great combinator and the Bulgarian Ostap Bender, claims to have unraveled the mysterious murder of a young and beautiful lawyer, committed back in 2000.

Iliya Nikolov aka the Nut took the witness stand on Monday only to back the widely floated version that Nikola Filchev, Bulgaria's controversial and erratic former senior prosecutor, has masterminded the gruesome murder of Nadezhda Georgieva nearly twelve years ago.

He however also claimed that Filchev and Georgieva had a love affair.

Nikolov, who is serving his time at the prison in the town of Lovech, once shared a cell with Plamen Kalajdzhiev, one of the defendants in the trial, whom he cites as the source of his information.

Georgieva was killed in her home in Sofia, suffering nine blows from a kitchen cleaver on February 28, 2000.

The new witness appeared in the court room as he court saga over the murder, which has stretched over more than a decade already, was resumed.

The lack of progress so far has been due to the authorities' failure to bring back to Bulgaria one of the defendants - Dimitrinka Kalajdzhieva, a former prosecutor's secretary, who has run into hiding in Great Britain shortly after the murder.

Last month the UK Supreme Court ruled against the extradition of the defendant, triggering a furious controversy in the Balkan country.

According to the court there is sufficient evidence to probe a possible connection between the murders of Nikolay Kolev and Nadezhda Georgieva.

The new witness, who has spent a quarter of his life in jail, claims Georgieva, Kolev and Filchev were involved in shady dealings, including drugs trafficking.

Previous witnesses have claimed that prior to the murder Nadezhda Georgieva was handed USD 150 000 to give to Filchev as a bribe to make him stop an investigation against the state-owned deep-sea fishing company.

Georgieva, however, did not give Filchev the cash and in a moment of a cyclophrenic crisis he killed her, plunging a kitchen cleaver in her head.

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