Scotland Yard reopens Cold War 'umbrella' murder file after 30 years

The Cold War murder of a Bulgarian dissident who was stabbed in the leg with a poisoned umbrella is being re-investigated by Scotland Yard after 30 years.

Journalist Georgi Markov, who defected to Britain from his native country in 1969, felt a stinging pain as he waited at a bus stop on Waterloo Bridge in London in September 1978.

He turned to see an unidentified man picking up an umbrella. Within hours, Markov, 49, a strong critic of Bulgaria's communist regime, had developed a high fever. Three days later he died in hospital.

A metal pellet the size of a pinhead and filled with the poison ricin was found in his calf, leading police to believe he had been assassinated by the Bulgarian Secret Service and KGB. Nobody has ever been charged with his murder.

Now detectives have flown to Bulgaria to seek access to documents from police archives and speak to former top-ranking secret police officers. The Metropolitan Police declined to discuss who they spoke to, but it is understood that about 40 people have been interviewed.

One key figure is the secret police officer Vladimir Todorov, who allegedly directed the assassination of Markov and was later jailed for allowing secret files on the case to be destroyed.

A second person suspected of destroying documents committed suicide, while a Bulgarian spy who was believed to be involved in the assassination died in a car accident. Officers are also believed to have spoken to Lyuben Gotsev, who became deputy foreign minister after the fall of communism.

A team of poilce, thought to be from Counter-Terrorism Command, visited Bulgaria for two weeks in May. They also visited in March and in April last year.

A Scotland Yard spokesman said: 'This inquiry remains open and has been a particularly complex investigation.

'We continue to work with the appropriate international authorities to investigate any new information that is passed or made available to police.'

One theory that the Bulgarian newspaper Dnevnik paper gave for the case being reinvestigated is that on September 11, the 30-year statute of limitation on the case will expire under Bulgarian law.

After that date, it will no longer be possible to launch legal proceedings.

Another theory is that the Markov case could help Scotland Yard in its investigation into the murder of Alexander Litvinenko. The former KGB agent died in 2006 after being poisoned with radioactive polonium in London.