Posted on 06/04/2005 6:49:27 PM PDT by Pikamax
London umbrella assassin is named Jack Hamilton, Sofia and Tom Walker
THE IDENTITY of the secret agent who assassinated Georgi Markov, the Bulgarian dissident, with a poison pellet umbrella on Waterloo Bridge in London has finally been revealed. Leaked intelligence documents have named Francesco Giullino, a Dane of Italian origin who worked for the Bulgarian secret service, as the hitman who carried out the murder 26 years ago.
The new evidence is likely to prompt fresh inquiries from Scotland Yard, which has kept an open file on the notorious cold war killing.
Giullino, now 59, is named in Bulgarian secret service files released last week. He is described as agent “Piccadilly” who worked for the communist era Durzhavna Sigornost (DS), the Bulgarian equivalent of the KGB.
A former crook, he was recruited by the DS after Bulgarian border police arrested him for drug smuggling in 1970. One intelligence report said of him: “He does not feel fear.”
The DS sent Giullino on three trips to London in 1977 and 1978 to “neutralise” Markov, a playwright who was a persistent critic of the regime in radio broadcasts for the BBC Bulgarian service.
On September 7, 1978, Markov was waiting at a bus stop on Waterloo Bridge, near the BBC’s Bush House offices, when a stranger with an umbrella prodded him apparently by accident. In fact Markov had been “shot” in the thigh with a ricin-laced pellet fired from the umbrella. He developed a high temperature and died three days later.
Where is Giullino now?
Is your question meant to insinuate that the reporter did a lousy job on this article?
No, I just want to know where he is. He needs to go to The Hague.
Well, if the reporter had done his job properly, we'd all know the answer to your question.
In the The Times the article is longer and finishes with this:
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. His fingerprints were taken along with analyses of his signature.
Giullino admitted espionage but denied any involvement in the Markov killing. He was not held, because Denmark had no case against him.
The Danish ministry of justice sent an urgent diplomatic note through its ambassador in Sofia to the Bulgarian government requesting information on Giullino. It was ignored.
On April 18, 1993, Giullino left Denmark. Two months later his house in Copenhagen was put up for sale. This was the last anybody heard from him although Hristov believes that he is still alive. “Nothing bad has happened to him,” he said.
On September 29, 1993, Richard Thomas, then the British ambassador in Denmark, and his Danish counterpart met Zhelev to press for answers to the case, but Bulgarian co-operation fizzled out.
Thomas, who is now retired from the Foreign Office, said Zhelev should not be blamed for the intransigence. Two years earlier, in 1991, he remembered taking Zhelev to Markov’s grave in Dorset, and being struck by his passion for the case.
After their 1993 meeting, Zhelev passed the issue to the office of the chief prosecutor, who refused to order the release of the documents, citing the lack of any agreement for judicial assistance between Denmark and Bulgaria.
In 1992, General Savov committed suicide shortly before going on trial for his role in the part-destruction of Markov’s dossier in the archives. The deception by Savov led most investigators to conclude that the truth of the murder would never be known. Hristov’s research has thrown the case open again, although there are few clues as to where Giullino may be.
Hristov believes that more details on Giullino are available, and is suing his government — which is anxious to keep its entry into the European Union on track — under its freedom of information legislation.
Shortly after the attack on Markov, Vladimir Kostov, a former Bulgarian state radio editor, was hit by a similar ricin pellet as he emerged from a Paris metro station. Thanks to a thick woollen cardigan, the poison did not penetrate his skin too deeply and he survived.
After Zhivkov’s regime collapsed in 1989, a stack of the specially adapted umbrellas was found in the interior ministry.
Thanks. That adds a lot of info.
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