A 29-year-old Bulgarian national was arrested in Greece on February 1 2009 after police discovered 57kg of heroin hidden in his motor vehicle at the Greek-Turkish border, according to a Greek police statement quoted by the Associated Press.

The drugs, divided in 100 small packages, were discovered by a police dog. The Bulgarian and his 20-year-old girlfriend were both arrested. They told police officers they were travelling from Turkey en route to France.

This is the second case in less than a week of a Bulgarian arrested abroad for carrying large amounts of drugs.

On January 28 2009 it was announced that Bulgarian lorry driver Zhivko Roussev had been been found inside an Iranian jail on death row for ferrying 135kg of heroin. The revelation came four months after he had disappeared without a trace.

The news was confirmed by the Foreign Ministry, which formed an emergency task force late on January 27 to evaluate the situation. A spokesman for the ministry told Bulgarian-language 24 Chasa daily that "a Bulgarian citizen is under investigation for drug trafficking. The expected sentence is the death penalty. The ministry is working on the case after we were informed by the Iranian authorities".

The Bulgarian driver was caught by police in the north-west town of Tabriz in September 2008. His daughter had assumed throughout that he had gone to Armenia to be with a girlfriend.

His employer, a Bulgarian company, initially did not disclose any information but later declared the man missing. Eventually it transpired that the 55-year-old man, Zhivko Stefanov Roussev, had been arrested after police found a hidden compartment in his lorry with 135kg of heroin.

Iranian authorities have informed the Bulgarian ambassador to Tehran that, in accordance with local law, anyone caught with more than 100g of heroin faces the gallows, regardless of nationality.

The Bulgarian company has made no attempt to intervene, either with the Iranian authorities, or to contact the Bulgarian Foreign Ministry. The case will be re-examined during a visit by the Iranian deputy foreign minister who is arriving in Sofia on February 2 2009.

In 2008, 230 people in Iran were executed, 317 in 2007. Murder, rape, armed robbery and drug trafficking are all punishable by hanging.