Identification of Woman in Spanish Cold Case After Two Decades

A woman whose body was discovered in Spain more than 20 years ago has been identified through an international police campaign.

The woman was named on Thursday as 31-year-old Russian citizen Liudmila Zavada.

She is the third person to be identified through the Operation Identify Me initiative, which was launched by police in 2023 in an effort to find the names of women who had been murdered or died in suspicious or unexplained circumstances in Europe.

Valdecy Urquiza, secretary general of international policing agency Interpol which leads the campaign, said the latest identification would give fresh hope to the families and friends of missing persons and new leads to investigators. After 20 years, an unknown woman has been given back her name, he said.

Ms Zavada's body was discovered in July 2005 beside a road in the province of Barcelona in northeastern Spain. She was referred to by police as the woman in pink, because she was dressed in a pink floral top, pink trousers and pink shoes. Local police said the cause of death was suspicious, as evidence suggested that the body had been moved in the 12 hours before it was found. But investigations failed to uncover her identity.

Last year, the case was added to Operation Identify Me, which has seen Interpol black notices - seeking information about unidentified bodies - released to the public for the first time, and records such as fingerprints shared with police forces around the world.

Earlier this year, Turkish police ran the fingerprints through a national database, uncovering Ms Zavada's identity. A DNA match was then established with a close relative in Russia.

Police investigations into Ms Zavada's death and the circumstances around it are continuing. The first woman identified through the campaign was 31-year-old Rita Roberts from Wales, who was murdered in Belgium in 1992. Earlier this year, a woman found dead in a poultry shed in Spain was identified as 33-year-old Ainoha Izaga Ibieta Lima, from Paraguay in South America.

Due to increased global migration and human trafficking, many people are reported missing outside their home countries, complicating the identification of bodies. Women are particularly vulnerable to gender-based violence, including domestic violence and trafficking.