Woman in Spanish cold case identified after 20 years as Liudmila Zavada

Russian citizen Liudmila Zavada, 31, was found dead in July 2005 by a road in the northeastern Spain.

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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.

The first case was a British woman murdered in Belgium, whose family identified her after seeing a photograph of her tattoo in a BBC News report.

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.