http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jun/20/internationalcrime
Scotland Yard detectives have twice visited Bulgaria in three
months in a final attempt to solve the murder of Georgi Markov, in
which the Bulgarian dissident was jabbed with a poisoned umbrella
while waiting for a London bus in 1978.
A team from the Metropolitan police travelled to Sofia in April
2007, then in March this year and again last month, in the hope of
identifying the assassin before Bulgaria's 30-year statute of
limitation expires in September.
Last night, a spokeswoman said: "The inquiry remains open and has
been particularly complex. We continue to work with the appropriate
authorities to investigate any new information that is passed or
made available to police."
The Bulgarian newspaper Dnevnik reported that Scotland Yard
requested access to archives and permission to interview 40
witnesses, including former secret police.
The murder remains one of the most enduring mysteries of the cold
war. Markov was an opposition activist and BBC broadcaster who had
survived two previous assassination attempts. Waiting at a bus stop
on Waterloo Bridge, he felt a pain in his thigh and saw a man pick
up an umbrella. Three days later he was dead. A postmortem found a
tiny pellet in his thigh, dosed with the poison ricin.
After the Bulgarian regime collapsed in 1989 a stack of the
umbrellas, modified to fire pellets, was found in its interior
ministry. In 1992, General Vladimir Todorov, a former intelligence
chief, was sentenced to 16 months in jail in Bulgaria for
destroying files relating to the killing. Gen Stoyan Savov, the
deputy interior minister, killed himself before facing trial. Vasil
Kotsev, believed to be the operational commander, died in an
unexplained car accident.
