POPE CASE REMINDS BRITONS OF UNSOLVED BULGARIAN CRIME

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000505130002-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 20, 2010
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: December 30, 1982
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/20: CIA-RDP90-00552R000505130002-7
Lnr I C1
C PAGE
ND: YORK M MS
30 DECD Et 1982
Pope Case Reminds Britons
Of Unsolved Bulgarian Crime,
By R.W. APPLE Jr.
Spacial to The New Port Tuna
LONDON, Dec. 29 - On Sept. 7, 1M,
a Bulgarian playwright named Georgi
1. Markov was walking in the Aldwych,
a street near the offices of the BBC
World Service, where he worked as a
broadcaster.
Suddenly, in the midst of rush-hour
crowds of pedestrians and of bystand-
ers waiting at bus stops, a man thrust
an unmbrella into the back of Mr. Mar-
kov's right thigh, then murmured his
apologies and leaped into a taxi. At the
time the incident seemed harmless
enough. But the next day the Bulgarian
discovered what a friend called "an
angry red spot" on his leg and felt ill.
Four days later he died.
'A Few Hard Facts'
Mr. Markov, who also worked as a
freelance journalist for Radio Free Eu-
rope, the American-backed station
broadcasting to Warsaw Pact coun-
tries, claimed on his deathbed that he
had been murdered by Bulgarian secret
agents. And the following January, a
coroner ruled that he had been killed by
a powerful poison - ricin, derived from
the castor-oil plant - secreted from a
platinum pellet the size of a pinhead.
The pellet appeared to have been fired
from the umbrella.
The attacker has never been found,
and British officials never accused the
Bulgarian Government of complicity in
the kil ing.
in recent weeks, however, the inci-
dent has been much discussed here be-
cause of allegations that Bulgarians
were involved in the attempt on the life
of Pope John Paul II by Mehmet All
Agcain1981.
Intelligence and other officials here
are not yet convinced by the evidence
made public in Italy; one said that "I
would like to see a few hard facts." But
their curiosity has nonetheless been
piqued.
Neither the British nor other Western
European officials consider the Bulgar-
ian secret service to be particularly ac-
tive. With only 8.9 million people, Bul-
garia is the least populous Warsaw Pact'
nation and one of the poorer ones, and
its foreign policy - unlike Rumania's,
for instance - is very closely tied to
that of the Soviet Union.
"Generally speaking," one diplomat
said, "I would say that East German
and Czech agents are far more active in
the West than Bulgarian agents. We see
only a few isolated incidents in which
the Bulgarians appear to have played a
role, although some of them attract
seri-
ous whether the publicity. if they
wanted to involve themselves in major
international incidents, would willingly
choose the Bulgarians as their instru-
mes, and I am quite sure that the Bul-
ganans would not act on their own."
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/20: CIA-RDP90-00552R000505130002-7