UPDATE
I am prepared to acknowledge that, given the gate design, they could have passed through different gates in exact synchronicity and this may be a red herring. I am leaving this post up here as it is good to acknowledge mistakes. Please read my updated post Skripals – The Mystery Deepens
Russia has developed an astonishing new technology enabling its secret agents to occupy precisely the same space at precisely the same time.
These CCTV images released by Scotland yard today allegedly show Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov both occupying exactly the same space at Gatwick airport at precisely the same second. 16.22.43 on 2 March 2018. Note neither photo shows the other following less than a second behind.
There is no physically possible explanation for this. You can see ten yards behind each of them, and neither has anybody behind for at least ten yards. Yet they were both photographed in the same spot at the same second.
The only possible explanations are:
1) One of the two is travelling faster than Usain Bolt can sprint
2) Scotland Yard has issued doctored CCTV images/timeline.
I am going with the Met issuing doctored images.
UPDATE
A number of people have pointed out a third logical possibility, that the photographs are not of the same place and they are coming through different though completely identical entry channels. The problem with that is the extreme synchronicity. You can see from the photos that the channel(s) are enclosed and quite long, and they would have had to enter different entrances to the channels. So it is remarkable they were at exactly the same point at the same time. Especially as one of them appears to be holding (wheeled?) luggage and one has only a shoulder bag.
I have traveled through Gatwick many times but cannot call to mind precisely where they are. Can anybody pinpoint the precise place in the airport? Before or after passport control? Before or after baggage collection? Before or after customs? The only part of the airport this looks like to me is shortly after leaving the plane after the bridge, and before joining the main gangway to passport control – in which case passengers are not split into separated channels at the stage this was taken. I can’t recall any close corridors as long as this after passport control. But I am open to correction.
Please read my updated post Skripals – The Mystery Deepens
Mystery solved: these are separate “channels” at International Arrivals @ Gatwick: see here with the different cameras too : https://twitter.com/search?q=MichaKobs&src=typd&lang=en
More photos here: https://twitter.com/bleidl/status/1037540166020280320
Moon of Alabama agrees and is updating his article.
In case no one has posted this already, “Moon of Alabama” has posted a similar story but then has an update “In the North Terminal of Gatwick Airport, at the northern end of arrival level zero, there are several parallel and apparently identical gates leading into the airport. Each of these has a camera.” Story includes a photo of the parallel gates:
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/09/a-curious-timestamp-in-the-new-novichok-evidence.html#more
Looking at those passageways, they are way narrower than the picture of the security funnels. Also floor looks like carpet.
I agree with you Bill. The corridors leading into the arrivals hall have to be wide enough to take a luggage trolley. The ones the assassins are coming through are much narrower.
But more importantly, the gates into the arrival hall are preceded by a glass door with a clear ‘no entry’ sign on them. These have to be swing doors – if they were recessed sliding doors they would block the adjacent corridor. When open, they should obscure most of the rail on the next wall panel.
There is no trace of these doors in the assassin photos.Even if by some trick of the angle and the light you couldn’t see anything at all of the ‘no entry’ sign, they should still be obscuring the rail. In fact, the whole of the rail is clearly visible.
They’re not the same corridors.
Like all complex buildings like airports. Wheres the camera identification information.
CAM 1, CAM 2
The file names
CO1416-18-CCTV2.jpg
CO1416-2018-CCTV1.jpg
suggest different cameras
To the people with the correct tools, If you use extreme contrast and brightness setting.
You can see the JPG artefact around the date time stamp is too regular, where the selection tool used was the
rectangular method. This is with CO1416-18-CCTV2.jpg
File name also suggests the time of 14:16, its what I would use.
These pictures look to be more like a screen snip rather than a saved frame output (one of them has a bit of tooltip included in the crop). If you had access to the original system it may be possible to generate a frame with significantly more metadata such as the camera id/location description/number of gate opening events. Having these permanently on screen would not be ideal as distracting from reviewing the images. These names would just be those given to the snippets released by the police. It is also unbelievable that the two cameras would be nos 1 & 2 out of 1200 or however many are in Gatwick.
I would think that is the same location. The apparent narrowing of the corridors is due to the odd geometry of the camera position.
What does surprise me is that they have next to no luggage, yet are exiting past the luggage collection. If I was carrying deadly nerve agent, I would want it padded and protected beyond all possible scenarios of destruction.
Bill, you’re full of it. The pictures are clearly from this place:
https://www.google.com/maps/@51.161154,-0.1773495,2a,75y,176.65h,71.48t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1skrDKt_hDawNNL1vh1ILPPw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
In uncropped shots, you can even make out the red poster on the right wall.
Yes you can make out something red in the “official” photos?.
So now try this. Use Google to walk backwards through the glass doors then turn round.
On the glass doors are a large black circular label with yellow way out written on it.
Can anyone see the glass doors or the circular signs in the “official” photos?
Excellent find! Isn’t it interesting how what can at first look inexplicable can have a simple logical explanation. I’m all for keeping on the govt’s case but it’d be good for Craig to row back on this now there is a sufficiently plausible explanation. The two men approached the entrance gates side by side, separated and passed through at the same time.
Also very strange that they would go to the trouble of artificially tilting a camera angle but not changing the timestamp, don’t you think?
once you are down the rabbit hole, very difficult to get out to be honest, it is conspiracies/false flags everywhere – there are plenty of reason to be sceptical of governments & media etc
but what is hilarious are these sceptical people showing so little actual scepticism –
keep and open mind, but not so open you brains fall out
I also travel extensively, that passageway is too narrow for public use, it’s like a service link. Technicians, cleaners etc.
I have been in some very narrow jet passageways when embarking and disembarking but would be surprised if they were photographed on Google. They might contain CCTV cameras of course.
The surreality meter goes off the register on the same day as the latest Skripal nonsense is announced.
Prince Charles speaks at the GQ Awards: “Thank you to GQ Magazine for doing this, I am hugely grateful”
HRH The Prince of Wales receives the Editor’s Lifetime Achievement Award for Services to Philanthropy
https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/prince-charles-gq-awards-2018
PS Is that the taxpayers’ philanthropy to the royal parasites?
Craig, I know airports like the back of my hand, (30 years at sea), I’d go with your analysis that the passageway looks like the bit after the link span, that is designed to slow down and funnel passengers to the wider corridors preventing crushing.
Explains the crappy CCTV as I’m dam well certain those areas where you’re actually being photographed at passport/ customs the lighting and camera quality will be high.
If it is the exact same camera, why are the angles in the picture different. Look at the barrier on the right hand side, it is lower on the seond photo. If they were the same camera at the same position and angle, then there would be no difference as to where everything sits.
Like all complex buildings like airports. Wheres the camera identification information.
CAM 1, CAM 2
The file names
CO1416-18-CCTV2.jpg
CO1416-2018-CCTV1.jpg
suggest different cameras
To the people with the correct tools, If you use extreme contrast and brightness setting.
You can see the JPG artefact around the date time stamp is too regular, where the selection tool used was the
rectangular method. This is with CO1416-18-CCTV2.jpg
File name also suggests the time of 14:16, its what I would use.
Where are the file names?
Here
http://news.met.police.uk/images/cctv2-equals-image-of-boshirov-at-gatwick-airport-at-15-00hrs-on-02-march-2018-1407997
Here
http://news.met.police.uk/images/cctv1-equals-image-of-petrov-at-gatwick-airport-at-15-00hrs-on-02-march-2018-1407995
Gosh there are a lot of pro-Russian visitors here all of sudden.
I am not saying I believe the Met police account – everyone who visits here regularly knows my view of them. But some of our visiting posters are getting a bit carried away in muddying the waters with silly claims. The flight the Met claims the assassin’s arrived on on 2 March was Aeroflot SU2588 to Gatwick for example. I suppose the idea is to toss in a load of irrelevant red herrings if you will forgive the mixed metaphors.
For anyone who wants a summarised version of the official account, The Daily Mail has a very handy diagram of the claimed assassins movements as reported by the Met Police. You can see it here. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/index.html
Only a complete muppet reads the daily mail. And no, I’m a Brit from Oxford of old age.
Why o why do you buy such a treasonous rag, Viscount Rothermere endorsed the Nazi, promoted the Blackshirts, Is the most libelled paper, globally ! Not to mention the laiten racism, bigotry and xenophobia.
Don’t even start me on taxation…………………
Oh grow up Bevan. It is exclusively through the Daily Mail (and Breitbart) that I learned:
1. The actual original source of the ‘Obama birther’ conspiracy.
2. The fact that Connie St Louis, the woman whom the Guardian championed in her destruction of the reputation and retirement of Professor Sir Tim Hunt, is a congenital liar who appears never to have spoken a word of truth in her entire life.
Not a word of the facts behind either of these stories has ever been whispered in our grand ‘progressive’ media.
The Daily Mail – hell, yes!
Most reliable MSM publication – WMD claims, for a pristine example of a ‘truther’ report – all .gov honest truth printed in there.
/s
I was merely pointing out that it has a handy diagrammatic representation of the men’s movements as per the Met police official account. It includes for example the numbers of the Aeroflot flights on which they arrived and left the UK and their timed capture on local CCTV cameras in Salisbury. If you want to debunk the official account, you first need to know what it says. The Daily Mail link has it in a handy condensed form, that is all.
The Guardian has a similar account, without quite as much detail. Both accounts left me quite breathless at the sheer professionalism of these highly-trained GRU operatives, whose carefully-hatched plot, months or perhaps even years in the planning, involved walking up to soemone’s door in broad daylight and smearing a deadly nerve agent on the handle (presumably in their hazmat suits, or perhaps not), in full view of whoever might be passing. It also involved wandering around the streets of Salisbury in broad daylight, ostentatiously ensuring that there were loads and loads of clear CCTV photos of them in all sorts of incriminating locations, for the security services to get hold of and the media to publish at the exactly the most opportune moment.
That is the final nail in the coffin for me, as far as any remaining shreds of credibility in the official account are concerned.
You forgot the miniaturised shrink wrapping machine he was carrying in backpack that he cunningly deployed before they ditched the perfume bottle !
You might want to pass this information on to Ian Blackford the SNP leader at Westminster he’s just explained on good Morning Scotland that as a member of the Privy Council how he has seen all or most of the information regarding this case and has come to the conclusion that Russia is a state terrorist
Must be doctored images. The camera must have been locked off in that area With no panning or zoom facility because there would be no point. If you look at the date stamps they are in a slightly different place on the picture. The bent lines on the wall, due to the wide angle lens, cross the stamp in different places.
Why are the government systematically destroying all the evidence associated with the case, on the spurious grounds that it could all be contaminated with a nerve agent? I think it should all be dug up again and made available to truly independent investigators such as Craig to examine.
I too have travelled through Gatewick many times and cannot recall where they could be.
But not often enough to know how to spell it?
So now we have the whole scenario adapted in fiction form by the resident Guardian fiction writer Luke Harding. It makes for a really good read:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/sep/05/planes-trains-and-fake-names-the-trail-left-by-skripal-suspects
Moonofalabama’s ”answer to the question” is no answer at all. The Met’s case alleges that these 2 Novickokkers passed through the chute at the EXACT SAME HUNDREDTH OF A SECOND. The fraud is obvious, and the PhotoShopping is undeniable.
100th of a second? Ha ha ha, the time says 16.23.43. They can’t even tell the time, let alone comprehend the live time appearing as playback time/export time?
Experts in CCTV forensics you ain’t. There are online courses you can enrol in y’know?
I am still wondering how the fake perfume turned up in a bin in Salisbury 4 months later. The police say they have no idea about this.
I noticed an interesting comment in the MSM yesterday, by an academic who claimed to be a specialist in espionage counterterrorism that sort of thing, saying that whoever poisoned the Skripals could have stayed in Salisbury “under cover,” and not left immediately.
Is it possible there is a third person involved locally who decided to get rid of the remaining Novichok and threw it into a rubbish skip at the back of the town centre, several months the later?
Also there was a report that “Ferdanta”” (from memory) news agency had checked out the Russian addresses of the “assassins” and they don’t appear to live there. Presumably you can offer any old fake identity and get a UK visa?
Both images edited with Creator Tool: Windows Photo Editor 10.0.10011.16384
See exif data http://fotoforensics.com
Download images from http://news.met.police.uk/latest_media
Craig, regarding your update on the article. Take a look at this – goo.gl/dvUcYt. You go through these channels as you enter the main terminal after baggage collection. These channels are not that long as you can clearly see now. If you have two people walking alongside each other and then going through different channels, and considering an average walking speed of 1.4 metres per second, the synchronicity you refer to makes perfect sense.
If the UK claims are correct, and this was a Russian government sanctioned GRU hit on the Skripals then, as I and others have pointed out, the Russian government must have wanted the world to know that they were responsible.
It would have required minimal effort to have avoided this transparency. Had the alleged assassins traveled on non Russian passports from anywhere but Russia, and used anything but a Soviet era nerve agent, it would have been much more difficult to tie it to Russia.
Why Russia would want to supply the UK with the ideal pretext to ramp up sanctions and across the board anti-Russian aggression is difficult to fathom. Especially in the lead up to the World Cup.
Another obvious point. Beyond the high risk of being detected while applying nerve agent to the door handle of a house which is overlooked from the street and another 10 or 15 houses on a Sunday afternoon, there is the fact that there was sufficient time for the UK authorities to have intercepted the alleged hit men at the airport some 9 hours after the nerve agent was allegedly applied to the door. Given that one of the victims was an ex British spy, it would not have been impossible for the authorities to have determined that the Skripals were the victims of a hit, and consequently tightened security at airports resulting in these two alleged assassins being intercepted before boarding their flight.
On the other hand, if this was not a Russian government sanctioned hit, but some rogue element within the Russian intelligence services or possibly Russian mafia linked, then the two perpetrators would certainly have had a very strong incentive NOT to have left such an obvious trail as the Russian government would be more than anxious to detain them.
It will be interesting to see what the Russian authorities do say about their identities, if anything, in the coming days.
Finally, it would be a brave if not foolhardy assassin who would volunteer for such a mission. The risks of being intercepted would seem inordinately high especially without apparently any UK based support network which they could call on in the event of difficulties.
Agreed. I am still struggling with motive for a state sanctioned Russian hit. That does not mean I believe it was a false flag by British intelligence. Same problems with motive. I do not buy into any of the more extreme motives alleged here at times.
I await with interest further developments on the identity of the two men and the possible origin of fake perfume bottle and how it turned up 4 months after the event in Salisbury. These elements still have some way to run as crucial pieces of the “jigsaw”.
I am afraid that your interpretation of these two photos can be easily contradicted by the fruits of a close inspection of the photos. It is clear that the channel is constructed from repeating structural units, though how many it is not possible to tell but I suspect it must be quite a few (I will try to check later). Obviously, it is reasonable to then assume that each unit will have its own camera. If that is the case then a simple, non-conspiratorial, explanation presents itself: the two men are photographed at the same time, in the same channel but at different points in the channel. This interpretation is backed up by the obvious differences between the two photos.
It also claims the time as being 1500hrs which contradicts the alleged CCTV images
Bernie, your narrow mind doesn’t allow you to comprehend that either of the times referred to is the time the pictures were captured/transferred from the CCTV system?
the name BOShIRof is a JOKE on Boris Johnson
They are not the same cameras shooting at the same location. You can clearly see that the camera in the first pic is shooting more off-center in its shooting of the walkway versus the second pic in which the camera is shooting in a different and more straight angle down that second walkway. Hence, they are not the same camera, are not shooting the same walk way, and are not recording the same spot in the airport at the same time.
Moon of Alabama has published a picture of the airport entry passageways showing that the individuals may indeed have passed through parallel gates at the same time. The time stamps are remarkable fort their similarity, but otherwise maybe this whole thing is just a distraction. Two people. Two airport gates. Same time.
Short channels. People walking together and then entering the identical channels are more likely to be in sync than out of.
Another view of the four gates.
https://www.glir.co.uk/gatwicknorth/
Craig is Correct
It’s Impossible..Unless you are the bbc.. Ch 4, Sky. Fox, cnn, NYT. wapo, ECT
The two photo’s have been captured at around the same time. Are you suggesting that potential intelligence agents walk about with at least 1 second between them?
Looks like you’re grasping at straws.
The Passport photos, on Russian Passports travelling from a Russian airport has triggered what kind of response? Russian politicians literally dancing circles around UK ones on Russian media? A step change from asking for more evidence so as to conduct an investigation.
They are clearly upset/annoyed or just disappointed in the incompetence of their front line operators.
I’ve just heard Ian Blackford on GMS endorse the UK Police/Security services case that this is a case of “State Terrorism carried out by Russia”. Explaining that he has seen more evidence in his position as a Privy Council member he is in no doubt that Russia is the perpetrator. When pressed on RT and his MPs appearing on Salmonds and other shows. He explained that “RT is a tool of the Russian State which is involved in terrorism”. Don’t expect to hear any serving SNP members on RT or Sputnik any time soon.
Sorry but I think they are in the location shown in the Google link shared earlier, in parallel corridors and the two cameras were triggered together. I don’t think the photos are faked.
However who these people actually are, where they are from, or the purpose of their arrival at Gatwick is another matter.
Don’t expect SIS to publish the full Russian Passports yet, they will have been shared with all authorities that imposed expulsions/sanctions in March/April though. With this and more evidence it’s unsurprising that foreign security sources endorsed this evidence. Couple this with the Russian’s reluctance to provide evidence from “their end” of the passengers passing through the gate to board their plane. These two clowns alias’s clearly appear on passenger manifests provided by Aeroflot yet they deny they travelled at all. The bottom line is article 21 of the Russian Constitution doesn’t allow for extradition of Russian’s. This flies in the face of their offer to investigate this themselves.
@ Bu axmoqlik September 6, 2018 at 08:53
‘…Couple this with the Russian’s reluctance to provide evidence from “their end” of the passengers passing through the gate to board their plane…’
Where did you get that information?
Time to drop this one, so it doesn’t prove a distraction from May actively undermining the police inquiry, seemingly for political advantage, by claiming without evidence that these are GRU agents. If they are, they are extraordinary sloppy ones. They use Russian passports, fly directly from Moscow, go directly to the crime scene by public transport twice, being captured on cctv probably thousands of times, drop a bit of Novichok in their hotel room to prove it was them, go up to Skripal’s house in broad day light and smear the worlds deadliest nerve agent (that will immediately be traced back to Moscow) on his front door whilst wearing jeans and a bomber jacket for protection, then go straight from the crime scene directly back to Moscow, tossing away the deadly chemical weapon into a bush as they go.
Sounds like amateur hour, a private sector job, or an attempt to embarrass Putin, rather than a state sponsored hit.
Yes, good points.
Also, you’d would think that the reconnaissance would have been carried out previously by another ‘agent’ and not the actual hit men.
And further, how could they be sure that the Skripal house did not have a hidden CCTV, a not unreasonable security precaution for an ex British spy to have.
On the other hand I don’t subscribe to the idea that the UK authorities are fabricating the entire narrative. I think the photo timestamp is probably a red herring. There is every chance that these 2 Russians did arrive and depart as claimed by the UK authorities as well as visit Salisbury. That, of course, doesn’t mean that what we are being told by the UK authorities is complete or truthful in all respects.
I understand the incentive for the UK government holding this information back while waiting for an opportune moment such as distracting from the Brexit meltdown. But 6 months is too long imo as there have been plenty of mini-crisis in the interim where this would have served as a very useful distraction.
It may relate to the fact that, for example, they actually know the provenance of the perfume allegedly found by Rowley and it conflicts with the narrative of these two Russians being the hit men.
I agree with you teganjovanka. I think Craig has got this one wrong. The timers on the cameras are only accurate to a second, and you can walk two or three metres in a second, so it’s quite conceivable that two people traveling together could walk through two separate corridors and be timed to the same second while being a fair distance apart.
There are other legitimate issues with the photos and questions as to whether they are actually the arrivals corridors at Gatwick, but these pale into insignificance beside the issues you have raised – two highly-trained GRU operatives wandering around Salisbury in broad daylight, apparently doing their level best to be photographed in as many incriminating locations as possible, and applying the deadliest nerve agent known to man to a door handle, again in broad daylight, without any protective clothing at all.
Mysteriouser and mysteriouser….we simply cannot believe anything or anybody anymore can we?
Russia’s new training video …. synchronise walking for spies
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aB86NY6CGiE
Ah, the wheeled luggage contains the Novichok ‘Black Propaganda’ nerve agent – specially formulated from Siberian Bullshit.
Really, my grandchildren could do a better job than the Met’s / intelligence services (sic) amateur dramatics society
Or Russians have developed shape shifting technology.
Or two green channels at Gatwick? Or spies do actually travel less than 1 second apart? LOL