Sharif Ahmadzai, a 26-year-old Afghan professional boxer, is due to appear before an investigating magistrate Wednesday over the killing of British aid worker Elizabeth-Jane Ross, whose body was found stuffed inside a suitcase in a derelict building in Athens's Kypseli district. Mr. Ahmadzai denies killing her, claiming he found her already dead and hid her body to avoid being implicated.
Mr. Ahmadzai arrived in Greece in 2016 as an unaccompanied minor refugee, walking from Afghanistan through Pakistan, Iran and Turkey before reaching Lesbos, according to Britain's Daily Mail and The Sun.
He later settled in Athens, converted to Christianity and became a professional boxer while doing community work with refugees.
In 2023 he married American volunteer Alayna Hall, and the couple co-founded Love Every Nation Athens, a charity assisting refugees and vulnerable groups; its website has since gone offline. Ms. Ross, a friend of Ms. Hall's who shared her humanitarian and Christian outreach work, reportedly lived in an apartment belonging to the charity, to which Mr. Ahmadzai and his wife had keys.
Investigators believe a confrontation preceded the killing but are weighing two possible motives: that Ms. Ross caught Mr. Ahmadzai searching her belongings and taking her bank cards, or that the confrontation followed an attempted sexual assault.
A police source said Ms. Hall told officers her husband had confided being angered by Ms. Ross's efforts to draw him into a stricter Christian group.
Security footage central to the case shows Mr. Ahmadzai leaving Ms. Ross's apartment with a suitcase and backpack, heading toward the abandoned parking area where her body was later found, and returning 13 minutes later without the luggage.
He has admitted using her bank cards to withdraw cash and sending messages from her phone impersonating her to friends and family.
Ms. Hall alerted police after tracking her husband's location to the apartment on the night of July 15 while the couple was in Arachova.
She has since left their shared home with their child; relatives say her family opposed the marriage from the start.
Ms. Ross, from Edinburgh, had spent recent years volunteering with organizations supporting refugees and the homeless in Greece.
Her body was found July 18 by a homeless man, three days after her last confirmed contact with friends.