Umbrella attack

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Scheme of the weapon used, the so-called Bulgarian umbrella

The attack on the Bulgarian writer and dissident Georgi Markov , which was carried out in London on September 7, 1978, the birthday of the Bulgarian head of state Todor Zhivkov , who was often criticized by Markov , with the highly toxic herbal poison ricin is described as an umbrella attack.

execution

The perpetrator, presumably an agent of the Bulgarian secret service at the time, apparently accidentally injured the victim on London's Waterloo Bridge with a prepared umbrella tip (so-called Bulgarian umbrella ). A ball made of a platinum - iridium alloy with a diameter of 1.52 mm was injected into the lower leg of the victim . Two holes measuring only 0.34 mm in diameter had been drilled into the projectile at right angles to one another. Around 200  micrograms of the highly toxic poison ricin were filled in and sealed with icing, which easily dissolved in the tissue fluid at body temperature and then enabled the continuous release of ricin. The bead was discovered during the autopsy .

Initially dismissed as a harmless incident, the cause of the late onset symptoms of the poisoning was recognized far too late. Markov died four days after the attack.

examination

In June 2005, the British newspaper The Times named the Italian-born Danes Francesco Gullino as the main suspect for the attack. A 2005 television documentary by British broadcaster Five revealed, using several interviews recorded in the United States, Great Britain and Bulgaria, that Gullino is still healthy, alive and able to roam freely around the European Union . In the opinion of the authors of the documentation, it is possible that criminal prosecution was excluded from the statute of limitations from the end of 2008 due to the Bulgarian legal situation. Scotland Yard re-investigated the matter in June 2008 and dispatched officers to Bulgaria. They requested to see archived documents on the case and asked the Bulgarian authorities for permission to interview 40 witnesses, including former secret police officers. The former major general of the Soviet secret service Oleg Kalugin confirmed in an interview with the Bulgarian broadcaster Darik Radio that this attack was carried out on the orders of the Bulgarian party and state leader Todor Zhivkov . The KGB supplied the poison and the capsule.

Similar occurrences

A similar assassination attempt against the Bulgarian dissident and journalist Vladimir Kostov in August 1978 in the Paris Metro failed.

In the summer of 2011 in Hanover, a stranger stabbed a 40-year-old IT specialist from the industrial union IG BCE with an umbrella. At the top of the umbrella was a syringe filled with an organic mercury compound . The victim died several months later.

Movies

The assassination inspired the French director Gérard Oury in 1980 to make the film The Umbrella Killer ( Le coup du parapluie ) with Pierre Richard and Gert Fröbe . It also starred in the episodes Under the Skin and The Show Goes on of the television series The Last Witness . In addition, rule number 10 of the Navy CIS series, two fictional people, a reporter and a Navy officer, are murdered by a platinum-iridium ball filled with ricin and injected under the skin. In 2013 a German documentary was released under the title Bringing Silence - Georgi Markov and the Umbrella Murder , which was shown on Arte .

Trivia

The 2015 novel And the Scent of White by Stefanie Gregg contains a storyline that describes the planning and execution of the umbrella attack on the Bulgarian writer Georgi Markow. The author also continues the latest developments in the case, up to and including the discovery of a suspected accomplice in Austria in 2012.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Sweet ball . In: Der Spiegel . No. 7 , 1992, pp. 168-170 ( Online - Feb. 10, 1992 ).
  2. ↑ CNN.com: Ricin and the umbrella murder . October 23, 2003. Retrieved October 23, 2016.
  3. ↑ Sebastian Borger : How Moscow Murdered with a Poisoned Umbrella. In: Welt Online. September 6, 2008.
  4. ↑ Jack Hamilton, Tom Walker: Dane named as umbrella killer. In: The Sunday Times. June 5, 2005.
  5. ↑ The Umbrella Assassin. ( Memento of September 29, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) In: Five. 2006.
  6. ^ Sara Merchant: Umbrella Murder Case Stays Open. ( Memento from December 6, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) In: Sky News. September 9, 2008.
  7. ↑ umbrella or not? The poison attack on Georgi Markov 39 years ago. In: German Spy Museum. September 7, 2017, accessed on July 6, 2020 (German).
  8. ↑ Klaus Brill : Gift directly from the dictator. ( Memento from May 16, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) In: Süddeutsche Zeitung. August 2, 2008.
  9. ↑ New findings on fatal syringe attacks In: haz.de , October 29, 2012, accessed on September 16, 2018
  10. ↑ Mercury poisoning: 40-year-old dies after a puzzling syringe attack In: spiegel.de , May 11, 2012, accessed on June 25, 2013
  11. ↑ ZDF film: Silenced. At Arte 2013: Georgi Markov and the umbrella murder .