The http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=241 murder of Georgi Markov, the Bulgarian dissident who was assassinated using a poison-tipped umbrella, is being reinvestigated by Scotland Yard.
By Richard Edwards, Crime Correspondent
Counter-terrorism detectives spent two weeks in http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=1870 novel.
On a September evening in London in 1978, Markov, a prize-winning Bulgarian author and BBC broadcaster who had been classified as a “http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=4115 authorities, was waiting alongside commuters for a bus on Waterloo Bridge when he felt a stinging pain in his thigh.
A heavily built stranger dropped an umbrella, mumbled “sorry” and fled in a taxi.
Markov thought little of the seemingly trivial incident and continued his journey home; he was dead of a high fever in three days and was later buried in Dorset.The James Bond-style murder weapon was an umbrella, partly developed by the Soviet KGB, which fired a pellet the size of a pinhead, containing the poison ricin.
Three years ago a book citing leaked Bulgarian intelligence documents named the alleged hitman as Francesco Giullino, a Dane of Italian origin who worked for the Bulgarian secret service.
He is described as agent “Piccadilly” who worked for the communist era Durzhavna Sigornost (DS), the Bulgarian equivalent of the KGB. One intelligence report said of him: “He does not feel fear.”
Files allegedly show the DS sent Giullino, now 62, on three trips to London in 1977 and 1978 to “neutralise” Markov, who was a persistent critic of the regime in radio broadcasts for the BBC Bulgarian service. The DS files appear to confirm that he was the only agent in London at the time of the killing.
The nearest Giullino came to facing justice was on February 5, 1993, when he was interrogated in Copenhagen for six hours by British and Danish detectives after a tip-off linking him to the case. He admitted espionage but denied any involvement in the Markov killing. He was not held, because Denmark had no case against him.